LEMONT — The margin doesn’t seem unimpressive at first, but the score in the Class 6A quarterfinal game was the key: Lemont 14, Kenwood 0.
The Broncos rolled into Lemont on Saturday night, ignoring the cold and giving the unbeaten hosts all they could handle for 48 minutes.
In the end, the difference wasn’t Lemont’s offense, which managed to get 207 yards.
It was the defense, which forced a turnover that the offense turned into a score, and held the Broncos to 134 yards.
That combination catapults Lemont (12-0) into the 6A semis. East St. Louis, which trounced Crete-Monee, 45-0, on Saturday afternoon, will be the visitor. It’s Lemont’s first semifinal appearance in eight seasons.
“We work for this every day, day-in and day-out,” said outside linebacker Nathan Kunickis. “We knew coming in we’d have a little bit of a battle, but we fought through it.”
The cold seemed to energize each defense, particularly Lemont’s. A punt block by Kunickis, recovered by teammate Roberto Patino, late in the first quarter was the game’s first big play.
It set the hosts off on a six-play, 24-yard excursion that finished with Lemont’s Nate Wrublik fumbling on a 2-yard run at the goal line and A.J. Carlson recovering in the end zone for the score nine seconds into the second quarter. Wrublik’s 30 carries for 142 yards accounted for 68.5 percent of Lemont’s offense on a night when a fine snow fell for the last three quarters of the game.
“They’re unbelievably athletic defensively,” Lemont coach Bret Kooi said of Kenwood. “Our kids defensively showed up big time. Offensively, I got a little bit too conservative, as athletic as they are. But our kids got it done.”
Kooi who retires at season’s end and stands 198-102 in the 29th year of a career featuring a pair of state crowns at Lockport. If Lemont wins out, he’ll retire with 200 victories.
“I didn’t know, nor do I care,” Kooi said with a laugh.
The other big play was the 33-yard pass from Lemont’s Payton Salamon to Dylan Swanstrom on the second snap of the third quarter. Three plays later, Wrublik scored on a 5-yard jaunt around right end and it was 14-0.
The defense made it stay 14-0.
Kenwood, keyed by the Thunderbird brothers – quarterback Kevari and running back Kevin – hung around a lot longer than most observers expected. Twice, they threatened to score, including on a drive that extended into the fourth quarter, but ended with an incompletion on fourth-and-3 from the Lemont 9.
The Broncos could do nothing with a subsequent Wrublik turnover, Lemont holding defensively again thanks to a sharp pass defense.
“We were just flowing to the ball,” safety Carter Mikolajczak said. “The whole key was just send the house and let our defensive backs work.”
Kevari Thunderbird was 4-of-12 for 12 yards, with one interception, a pick by Mikolajczak and 20-yard return on Kenwood’s first drive of the third quarter.
East St. Louis, one of the best teams in the Midwest, will offer a challenge on another scale.
“I’m fully confident in our DBs and our defense,” Mikolajczak said. He added of watching Patino’s recovery of the punt block, “It’s like watching one of your big brothers helping you out, giving you a ride.”
Next stop on the trail: the semifinals.