Polo wins second straight 8-man state title with clutch plays in second half

MONMOUTH – After a first half where neither offense could get any traction, the Polo Marcos finally found some after halftime.

A long run by Avery Grenoble set up one Polo touchdown, then two long pass plays set up the second before the Marcos got one final stop to win their second straight Illinois 8-Man Football Association state championship with a 12-7 victory over Orangeville on Friday night at April Zorn Memorial Stadium in Monmouth.

“Right now, it’s the best time of our life,” sophomore Brock Soltow said. “I was watching them win it here in 2019 when I was in eighth grade, and I just wanted it so bad. I know the other guys wanted it really bad too, and this is so awesome.”

“To win this state championship with this group of guys is just phenomenal,” senior Wayde Reimer added. “I couldn’t be happier.”

After managing just one first down and 34 total yards in the first half, Polo (13-0) figured things out a bit after the break. Avery Grenoble broke off a 67-yard run on the second possession to set up a first-and-goal, and then punched it in two plays later from 4 yards.

But the 2-point conversion run failed after a muffed snap, so Polo still trailed 7-6.

However, it seemed to lift some of the pressure off the Marcos offense.

“As soon as we got that long run, we started getting a few more yards each play, and we got some huge conversions through the air, and that led to touchdowns,” said junior Grenoble, who ran for 89 yards and caught two passes for 34 yards. “We had a rough first half – we had so many mistakes – but to only let them have seven points, that was big. So we came out in the second half and said, ‘We’re still in this game.’ We put drives together when we had to, and it was just huge.”

Grenoble then made a crucial tackle on fourth-and-1 to get the ball back, and after the teams traded turnovers – Polo threw an interception, then Orangeville fumbled on the very next play – Polo took over with the ball at its own 27-yard line.

That’s when senior quarterback Tyler Merdian stepped up. After being hobbled by a lower leg injury in the first half, he converted a third-and-13 with a 33-yard pass to Grenoble, then converted another third-and-13 with a 31-yard pass to Soltow, who jumped over and around the defender to make the catch.

“That’s the greatest catch I’ve ever seen,” Merdian said. “I give 100% credit to the line for giving me time on those plays, and then Avery and Brock making the plays down the field.

“That’s the moment I’ve always wanted my whole life, and it came to me and I was able to deliver – and so did everybody else on this team tonight.”

Soltow ran for 13 yards on the next play to set up first-and-goal at the Orangeville 2-yard line, and Grenoble scored on the next play for a 12-7 lead.

Polo’s defense shut down the Broncos again and forced an incompletion on fourth-and-8, and the Marcos took over at the Orangeville 41-yard line with 2:38 to play.

Facing fourth-and-10 with 1:04 to play, Merdian again aired it out, hitting Soltow on an 11-yard completion for a first down to seal the victory.

“I have no idea what was going on in my head; I just wanted to catch the ball,” Soltow said of his two huge receptions. “I was losing it after I caught that second one, I was so happy, it was insane.

“Our defense was all over the ball tonight, and we shut down a lot of what they wanted to do. And once we scored that first touchdown, I knew our defense had it if we could score again.”

Leading 7-0, Orangeville (11-2) had a chance to increase its lead midway through the third quarter, driving to the Polo 4. The Broncos settled for a 22-yard field goal, but a roughing the holder penalty on Polo set up a first-and-goal from the 2, and the Broncos took the points off the board.

But again the Marcos defense was up to the task, helped by a personal foul on Orangeville after the third-down play. That pushed the ball back to the Polo 17-yard line, and this time a 34-yard field goal attempt was short.

Grenoble’s long run came three plays later, and the momentum had swung to Polo.

“You could definitely feel the momentum shift, and our attitudes changed as soon as he broke that run,” senior Cooper Blake said. “We were kind of down on ourselves a little bit, but when Avery broke loose, we just all came together and said, ‘All right, we’re going to do this, it’s time to go.’”

The first half was a defensive slugfest, as the defensive lines for both teams controlled the line of scrimmage. Orangeville had just three first downs and 79 total yards, with 48 coming on two plays.

Polo managed only the one first down and 34 total yards, with 24 of those coming on one Merdian run.

The Broncos won the field-position battle, as a snap on a punt attempt on the first Polo series sailed over the head of Grenoble for a 25-yard loss. While the Marcos stopped Orangeville in four plays, it helped set up the Orangeville touchdown on the next drive.

After Polo got a punt off following its second possession, Orangeville took over at the Polo 41. Gunar Lobdell converted a fourth-and-2 from the Marcos’ 37 with a 7-yard run; it was the first first down for either team. He then got loose for a 30-yard touchdown run on the next play to give the Broncos a 7-0 lead with 1:20 left in the first quarter.

“We just seemed really tight, offensively especially, but give them credit,” Polo coach Ted Alston said. “They were really shutting us down, and we kind of survived a lot of bad mistakes that we made and were able to get into halftime down only 7-0. We actually thought we were pretty fortunate to be in that position.”

Lobdell, who came in averaging 206 rushing yards per game and 10.24 yards per carry, had 129 yards on 31 carries – 4.2 yards per rush – and added an 18-yard catch to finish with 147 of the Broncos’ 169 total yards.

“Defense, we had the mentality the entire game that we were going to stop Lobdell, and we held him to less than 150 yards of total offense,” Blake said. “Our defense played phenomenal, and our offense – at halftime we had to make a couple of adjustments, and just make some big plays.

“We just had to make some plays to get going, and it worked out that way.”

The state championship has been on the minds of these Marcos ever since the 2019 team won the first team championship in school history. The feeling of elation at accomplishing the two-year-long goal

“This is exactly what we set out to do,” senior Blake Diehl said. “We started the season wanting to win state, and we won state. This is how we wanted it to end, and there’s not much better that we could ask for.”