Trevs, Hawks duke it out in Northfield as visitors hang on

New Trier coach Brian Doll and his players want a rematch.

“I wouldn’t mind playing them again,” Doll said after the Trevians (2-1) suffered their first loss of the season, falling to Maine South 35-28 on Thursday, Sept. 10, in Northfield. “We gave up a special teams touchdown; otherwise it was even. We got off to a slow start; in the second half we came back.”

“It stinks! It hurts!” lamented running back Throy Nightingale Jr., who spearheaded the unsuccessful counterattack. “If we play them again we’ll beat them.”

Senior quarterback Jackie Ryder saw it the same way: “If we meet them again I think we’ll wind up winning.”

“There’s a lot we can get out of this game,” he continued. “In the first half we could have executed better and scored more points. We’ve got to convert third downs. We’ve got to have longer drives. They have a lot of talent but we were right there. There’s a lot we can get out of this game.”

The Hawks (1-2) scored touchdowns in their first two possessions, driving 80 and 55 yards. Jameson Purcell connected with Keaton Vitel on a play covering 52 yards for the first TD and Din Kurtovic kicked the first of his five extra points. On the second Purcell found Matt Schlenhardt in the end zone from 2 yards out.

Nightingale got New Trier on the scoreboard with 1-yard run with 9:58 to play in the second quarter, and James Kyriakopoulos followed with the first of his four conversions.

“My blockers did a great job,” Nightingale said of the hard-earned touchdown that ended a 78-yard drive. “The linebacker was the only guy I had to beat.”

Maine South immediately answered with a rapid-fire 56-yard drive climaxed by Purcell’s 1-yard pass to Vitel.

In the final minute of the first half the Trevians stopped Maine South on downs at their 26 and surged downfield to the visitors’ 34 but an end zone interception by Gordon Bublitz ended the half.

Trailing 21-7 starting the second half, the Trevians had a 27-yard touchdown run by Nightingale negated by a holding penalty. But they stayed on the attack and reduced their deficit to seven points with 7:14 to play in the third quarter when Ryder went to the end zone on a 3-yard keeper and Kyriakopoulos converted.

The home crowd’s ecstasy turned into agony when Vitel fielded the kickoff at his 2-yard line and took the football down the left sideline to the end zone.

“I was thinking ‘I’m going to be patient until I see the hole,” Vitel said. “I saw the hole and it was only the kicker and me. I knew he wasn’t going to take me down.”

“They had the momentum and then Keaton Vitel took the kickoff all the way and took the momentum away,” Purcell said. “We knew this game was going to be a battle.”

On their next possession the Trevians struck back with a spectacular play of their own, a sneak attack that saw the running back Nightingale hurl a 54-yard pass to John Baxter that enabled them to close their deficit to 28-21.

“My linemen held them back, I threw it and John made the play,” Nightingale said.

Aided by a pass interference penalty, early in the fourth quarter Maine South got some insurance on Purcell’s 12-yard touchdown run.

The Trevians refused to surrender — Ryder’s 4-yard pass to Harry Resis and Kyriakopoulos’ extra point narrowed the gap back to seven points with 1:41 remaining.

But Maine South recovered the onside kick and killed the clock.

“Thursday night special just like the pros,” said the Hawks’ coach Dave Inserra, putting the contest into context. “Both teams had high-powered offenses and both could run and throw. Two big plays — our kickoff return and their halfback pass.”

Off to their best start since the COVID-shortened spring season in 2021, the Trevians outscored their opponents 141-13 in winning their first three games.

Following their 49-35 loss to Batavia in their opener the Hawks crushed Warren Township 54-14 and Maine West 41-7.

Inserra is in his 26th season at Maine South and the victory at New Trier gave him a 252-56 record at the Park Ridge school.

A sub-plot to this multi-faceted contest was the sideshow put on by a pair of Big Ten bound quarterbacks: the Purdue recruit Ryder, who completed 19 of 37 passes for 216 yards, and Indiana recruit Purcell, who completed 12 of 14 for 180 yards and ran 14 times for 88 yards.

Ryder expects they’ll meet again on the football field but he’s hoping it will be before they go to college. He would love to see it happen in the Illinois State High School Association Class 8A playoffs.

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