Two thousand, two hundred and five days of frustration came to an end on Friday night in the Battle of the Tracks as Fremd (7-1, 3-1) took down crosstown rival Palatine with a 23-13 home victory, marking the Vikings’ first win in the series since 2019.

“It goes back decades and decades and decades,” said Fremd coach Lou Sponsel, who served as an all-state linebacker for the Vikings in 1995. “There’s so much emotion in this … it’s huge for our school, it’s huge for our team, our program, all the work that goes into it. This one’s always a special one.”

The ballgame also marked the return of Fremd standout quarterback Johnny O’Brien, a Northwestern commit, who missed last week’s loss to Barrington with a lower body injury.

“[Palatine was] the only team that I’ve never beaten in the conference … the loss last year was on all of our minds the whole off season,” said O’Brien, who threw an 8-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver MarQuan Brewster with 1:21 remaining to put this year’s game away.

The strike to Brewster capped a 99-yard drive that began with 7:30 left in the fourth quarter after a Palatine punt on fourth-and-7 from the Pirates 33-yard line boomed past the Vikings return unit and was touched down at the Fremd 1-yard line.

A roughing the kicker penalty on that kick left Palatine coach Corey Olson with a difficult call to make: Accept the penalty and go for it on fourth-and-2 to keep Fremd off the field, or trust his defense to hold the Vikings in the shadow of their own goalpost.

“It’s a tough decision [to give] up field position on the 1-yard line, but knowing the outcome, hindsight’s 20/20,” Olson said. “[We] probably had a good play call if we would have gone for it on fourth-and-2. I will probably be thinking about that all night … but that’s the way it goes.”

The decision put the ball in O’Brien’s hands and set the stage for the Vikings to put five years of disappointment to rest.

“We’ve done that a thousand times,” O’Brien said. “Our offense, we love to be in situations like that, you know, game in our hands, the whole field to go. I mean, who wouldn’t want that?”

O’Brien went to work, finding Brewster near the Fremd sideline on several out routes, guiding his team across midfield.

Faced with a fourth-and-1 with 3:24 to play while approaching the red zone, O’Brien threw a 4-yard dart to wide receiver Ben Riddle to convert and keep the clock running.

A few plays later, O’Brien saw man coverage at the line and found Brewster on a post-corner route to score a touchdown.

“We had a different play called,” O’Brien said. “We go over the huddle and saw they’re giving us man-to-man with [MarQuan] … we’re going to take that all day.”

“I’d take MarQuan over anybody in the state. We just got a connection going.”

The dramatic score made it a two-possession game and Palatine could not respond.

The victory sends Fremd into Week 9 looking for win No. 8 against Schaumburg.

Meanwhile, Palatine (4-4, 2-2) has everything to play for against Conant as it seeks win No. 5.

“There’s a lot on the line,” Olson said. “It’s a playoff berth on the line … It’s not going to be hard for our kids to get ready and be ready to compete.”

Palatine stalwart Kole Fager scored both Pirates touchdowns against Fremd.

Vikings running back Jayden Faulkner punched in two rushing touchdowns for Fremd. The Vikings also added a Sheamus Sloan field goal midway through the third quarter.