Bluejays hang on for upset

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NORTH JUDSON -- After Friday night's 31-28 victory over Wheeler, North Judson coach Kevin Cox praised his opponents, saying the Bearcats have the "heart of champions." Cox could easily have said the same thing about his team.

In a classic battle between unbeaten Wheeler and the greatly improved 7-3 Bluejays, North Judson clawed and fought its way back from a 14-0 deficit to take a 31-14 lead going into the third quarter.

The Bearcats, who looked to be headed for what many would consider an unexpected loss, found a way to cut the North Judson lead to 31-28.

The Bluejays took advantage of five Bearcats turnovers to get that big lead, finding ways to score after forcing two interceptions and three fumbles.

"Costly penalties, and some suspect calls hurt us," Wheeler coach Dan Klimczak said, but he quickly added, "North Judson is a great team, and this was a great game."

The Jays had some big plays, but perhaps the biggest, was the score that gave the Bluejays their 28-14 lead.

On fourth down, quarterback Drake Barrett found Jim Kraus deep in the end zone for a 19-yard touchdown. As Cox pointed out, it was a play where Kraus and Barrett stayed with the play, and thus, gave their team a seemingly insurmountable lead. Later, Kraus would kick a 21 yard field goal and the Jays were up 31-14 with just six minutes left in the game

But as always, it was the Bluejays' ground game that set the stage for making everything work, and besides running backs Terry Howard and Andrew Frasure, Barrett had some great runs to finish just under 100 yards himself.

Wheeler's early scores came on its first series, a 67-yard Clay Duarte run, and minutes later, a sly, 37-yard pass from Chris O'Shea to Tyler Bolla.

"I really didn?t care to see them throwing those passes over our heads," Cox said.

North Judson began its comeback on a 50-yard breakaway by Frasure. Their second score came on a Barrett fake and keeper that saw some great broken field running that was combine by his breaking tackles in a 34-yard scamper. Barrett would add a 2-yard run.

"We played well for three quarters, but we got excited, and made some mistakes," Cox said.

The Bearcats roared back with O'Shea grabbing a 61-yard pass from Mike DeSimone, and then completing a short drive with Duarte going in from the 2.

In the comeback, Wheeler completed an onside kick, but a difficult 27-yard field goal attempt from the side hit the right goal post and bounced away.

The kick by Mitchell Voss was probably a rare miss from the Division I recruit.

"He?s a powerful weapon," said Cox.

North Judson?s offensive line played well, something they?ve been doing in recent weeks, and the defensive secondary, and Jay defensive backs kept DeSimone at bay just enough to prevent the Bearcat machine fro getting the balanced offensive push they?re used to.

"We made just enough plays to win," said Cox. "Overall, our defense played well.

One of those defensive stars was Chad Zimmerman, who had four or five plays that were game savers in holding Wheeler from big gains.

"It was a rough week," said Zimmerman. "We were just trying to execute, read the plays, and we came out and made some big ones."

Cox said that the defensive didn?t want DeSimone to open up his threat of a running game, "We didn?t want him breaking plays with his legs."