Earnest, Nagel lead way as Lemont scores wild win

LEMONT -- It's not very often that a football team has two players who rush for nearly 250 yards apiece and the outcome of their game isn't decided until the final minutes of play.

But that's just what happened to Lemont High School on Saturday night when it hosted Highland Park in a Class 6A opening-round playoff game.

Although the Indians jumped to an early 21-0 advantage and still were up by 20 points early in the third quarter, they had to hold off the determined Giants 48-35.

The Indians advance to a second-round road game against 10-0 Fox Lake Grant, which edged Simeon 24-13 Saturday.

Lemont (8-2) finished with 513 rushing yards and 547 total yards against Highland Park (6-4).

Leading the running attack for the Indians was running back Bobby Earnest (21 for 248 rushing) and quarterback Brett Nagel (18 for 245 rushing).

Earnest collected four touchdowns on runs of 4, 12, 41 and 64 yards while Nagel had a pair of scores on TD runs of 72 and 66 yards.

Those performances were necessary to offset the efforts of Highland Park quarterback Johnny Lindquist (21 for 135 rushing, 13-of-28 for 216 passing), who ran for an 89-yard score and also threw touchdown passes of 87, 40 and 3 yards to Tellef Lundevall (9 for 206 receiving).

"Highland Park is a well-coached, class team and their quarterback was sure something special and so was No. 84 (Lundevall)," Lemont coach Eric Michaelsen said. "They gave us everything that we could handle with all of their different formations, but we had a good game plan and the kids bent, but they didn't break.

"People are going to look at this game and see a 48-35 score and think it was a shootout. Obviously the offense did a nice job but our defense also stopped them when we needed them to. It was a total team effort."

The Indians started well after getting a 4-yard scoring run from Earnest 2:42 into the contest to grab an early 7-0 lead.

They extended the lead to 14-0 with 4:44 left in the opening quarter when Ryan Ferry blocked a punt and Nick Lawrence returned it 10 yards for a touchdown.

Lemont added another score with 8:51 left in the second quarter after Earnest went 12 yards over the right side.

But the Giants finally came to life a short time later when Danny Siegel intercepted a Nagel pass and returned it 21 yards for a score with 5:10 left before halftime.

Earnest gave Lemont a 28-7 lead with 2:04 left in the first half when he scored on a 41-yard run.

Highland Park countered a short time later, however, to pull to with 28-14 at the break following an 87-yard strike between Lindquist and Lundevall with 1:06 remaining.

Lemont took a 34-14 lead with 8:50 left in the third quarter when Earnest scored on a 64-yard draw play.

"Our O-line dominated up front, just like it has all year," Earnest said.

"We knew that this team had a lot of weapons and even with 4 minutes left anything still could have happened, but luckily it went our way.

"This was a big win since we knew that they were a real legit 6-3 team because they play an 8A schedule, so we knew that they would be well-prepared."

The Giants scored 1:32 later when Lindquist 89 yards down the right sideline to make it 34-21.

Things got even tighter with 2:03 left in the third after Lundevall caught a 40-yard pass from Lindquist.

Nagel seemed to give the Indians some breathing room after he dashed down the right sideline for a 72-yard score with 0:14 left in the third quarter to give his team a 41-28 lead. But Highland Park took advantage of a fumbled punt to set up a 3-yard pass from Lindquist to Lundevall with 8:56 left to make it 41-35.

On its first play on the next series, however, Lemont struck for the final time as Nagel went 66 yards down the left sideline to close out the scoring with 8:33 remaining.

James Westferro ended much of the drama when he intercepted his second pass of the day with 5:58 left.

"I thought our O-line did a great job up front opening big holes for me and Bobby and Drew Tomala to run through," Nagel said. "And for the most part, our defense played a good game and it came up with some big plays when we needed them. We didn't know much about them and were unsure of what to expect, but our coaches prepared us well.

"We're not used to playing a team that is motioning guys every play and is going five wide. Their quarterback is a real good athlete and we hadn't really played anyone who ran that type of offense, so that was tough for us, but I thought we adjusted well today."