Lincoln-Way East flexes its own offensive muscle in win over Bolingbrook

FRANKFORT — Lincoln-Way East entered Friday night’s game with Bolingbrook well aware of the fact that the visiting Raiders had a potent offensive attack.

The Griffins also knew they possessed a mighty fine offensive unit as well and they simply weren’t about to back away from anything that came their way.

“We talked about maybe trying to use the clock a little bit,” Lincoln-Way East running back James Kwiecinski said. “But we want to score. And we wanted to put them down and that’s what we did.”

Kwiecinski and the Griffins did just that, scoring seemingly whenever they wanted to, led mostly by a punishing ground game as they kept the Raiders at arm’s length most of the night, ultimately winning the SouthWest Suburban Blue Division matchup, 42-32.

The offensive line of Brad Abbott, Josh Janowski, Joe Torelli, Colin Redmond and Will Heitner routinely blasted open holes for the Griffins and Kwiecinski powered his way through to the tune of 188 rushing yards and five touchdowns.

“I feel confident that, we’ve been working out since January, I feel confident in them,” Kwiecinski said. “I feel like they are the best offensive line in the state of Illinois.”

That group certainly went about setting the tone as the two teams traded haymakers for most of the first half.

“We needed every bit of it,” Lincoln-Way East coach Rob Zvonar said of the efforts of his offensive line. “Really for the first time in a long time I had a feel that it could be this type of score. But we stayed persistent and did what we had to do.”

Kwiecinski drew first blood for the Griffins (5-0, 1-0) as he burst through the line for a 35 yard gain, Bolingbrook quickly countered with a 9-yard touchdown connection between Jonas Williams and I’Marion Stewart to close to within 7-6.

Kwiecinski would start Lincoln-Way East’s next drive with a 35-yard run that would ultimately set up a 37-yard pass and catch between Braden Tischer and Cade Serauskis.

The Williams to Stewart connection would net Bolingbrook another score early in the second quarter, but a mammoth kickoff return from Stephon Gist-Gardner would set the Griffins up at the Bolingbrook 12 and three plays later Kwiecinski crashed in from the 3-yard line to stretch Lincoln-Way East’s lead to two scores (21-12)

Jake Scianna picked off Williams early in Bolingbrook’s next possession and it wasn’t long before Kwiecinski was in for score number three.

But Bolingbrook (3-2, 1-1) wouldn’t be ran away from that easy. Stewart and Williams connected for the third time this time from 19 yards to whittle the lead down to 28-19, but Lincoln-Way East answered with yet another score just before the break as the Griffins passing attack put Kwiecinski in position to score his fourth touchdown of the half.

Stewart (8 catches, 206 yards) slipped a tackle early in the third quarter and sprinted into the end zone for a score and then the Raiders forced a fumble and Marcus Williams scooped it up and ran it back to the Lincoln-Way East 4. Williams went back to work and tossed his fifth touchdown of the game, a 4-yarder to Kaleb Miller to pull the Raiders to within 35-32.

But Lincoln-Way East responded to the threat with a backbreaking drive that ended with Kwiecinski scoring from 4 yards out and the Griffins defense got consecutive stops in the fourth quarter to finally squelch the Raiders fire.

“We don’t give up that many very often, but we settled down and made a few adjustments and slowed them down but we have a lot of work to do on some things,” Zvonar said. “This will make us a better football team down the road. We usually settle things down for 24 hours after a game, but we might let this one go for 48. This was a good win.”

Williams finished the game 23-of-46 for 390 yards passing.

Bolingbrook also played the game without its head coach, John Ivlow, who missed the game with an undisclosed medical issue.