ALTON – Marquette Catholic's 17-member senior football class had plenty of reasons to celebrate Saturday night.
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The Explorers ran out to a 27-0 lead at quarter time and went on to defeat Dupo 55-0 in a Prairie State Conference game at Public School Stadium, taking MCHS' record to 6-1 overall, 4-0 in the PSC; the Tigers, a newcomer to the PSC this year, fell to 0-7 overall, 0-5 in the league. The win clinched an IHSA playoff berth for the Explorers.
“It's always fun to have a big win on Senior Night,” said Explorer coach Darrell Angleton “The guys played well – we made a couple of mistakes though. The boys are excited.
“We try to be a complete team; we can pass, we can run, we've got a couple of different backs – I th
ink we've got three of the better running backs around (in Treven Swingler, D'Avion Peebles and Aaron Gregory) and I'll tell you – (Davion) Simmons is a first-year football player and he's something else.”
Marquette got on the board early when Kaleb Ware connected with John Blachford on a 28-yard touchdown pass in the opening two minutes of the game to take a 7-0 lead after Riley Veloff's convert; Peebles extended the lead to 14-0 with a 10-yard touchdown run with 4:03 left in the first, Veloff hitting the conversion attempt. Not long after that, Gregory grabbed a Dupo pass and went 28 yards to the house to put Marquette up 20-0 before Swingler took a Ware handoff and sprinted 17 yards on the final play of the opening quarter to put the Explorers up 27-0.
Kyle Begnel scored on a 1-yard plunge with 5:08 left in the second period to make it 34-0 in Marquette's favor before Swingler punched it in from 2 yards out to make it 41-0 for the Explorers at the half to invoke the running-clock rule in the second half.
Peebles got his second TD of the night on a 3-yard sprint to the end zone to make it 48-0 at three-quarter time and the Explorers' final score of the game came with 6.3 seconds left in the final quarter when freshman Gerold Nave III lofted a pass to freshman Davon Fields, who made a nice catch and eluded a Tiger defender before going 53 yards to the house for the final margin of victory.
“You saw a little bit of my freshman runners – they ran the ball well too,” Angleton said. “I was happy with that.
“The last touchdown (Nave to Fields) was all freshmen and two sophomores. That was a nice throw – they work hard every day in practice and we're a little shorthanded right now (due to some injuries), so the JV has to spend a little time playing scout with the varsity – it's made them better. They were pretty good there at the end.”
Marquette heads to Bunker Hill for a 7 p.m. Friday contest against South Mac, the Bunker Hill-Mount Olive coop; the Chargers downed Nokomis 32-27 Friday night to go to 5-2 on the year, 4-0 in the PSC; the game will be played at Bunker Hill. “They're a physical team, they run it downhill,” Angleton said of the Chargers.
Marquette then closes out the regular season at home against South Fork at 7 p.m. Oct. 20; the IHSA football playoff pairings will be announced Oct. 21.
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