BELLEVILLE - Steven Brown ran for three touchdowns for Belleville Althoff Catholic, while quarterback Blake Gelly had two touchdown passes and ran for a third for Highland, as the defending IHSA Class 1A champion Crusaders outlasted the Bulldogs 42-26 in a highly entertaining football game played Friday night at George Martz Field.
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Althoff extended its current winning streak to 16 games, having gone 14-0 a year ago in winning the Class 1A crown. The Crusaders are competing in Class 3A this season, having been promoted by the IHSA.
Althoff scored first on the opening kickoff, when Eli Bolden took the kick back 80 yards for the touchdown, then scored on its first official possession of the game when Brown ran in from 10 yards out with 8:11 left in the first to give the Crusaders a 14-0 lead. The Bulldogs countered with Gelly's first touchdown pass, 45 yards to Carter Harris, with the conversion making the score 14-7 with 6:6 left in the opening stanza.
Brown got his second touchdown of the night on a two-yard run late in the period to make it 21-7 for Althoff, but in the second quarter, Gelly got a five-yard touchdown pass, but the conversion missed, making the score 21-13 Crusaders at the interval.
In the third quarter, quarterback Jayden Ellington ran in from two yards out, and Brown scored again on a four-yard run with 1:35 left in the period to give Althoff a 35-13 lead, but the Bulldogs came back 20 seconds from the end of the period, as Gelly ran in from three yards out, cutting the Althoff lead to 35-20.
In the final period, Logan Thompson caught an 18-yard pass from Ellington for the touchdown to make it 42-20 after the convert, but Highland got one more score, with Harris running in from four yards away, but a two-point pass was incomplete, leaving the final score 42-26 for the Crusaders.
Highland is now 1-1 on the year, and hosts Jersey in their final Mississippi Valley Conference opener next Friday, while Althoff goes to 2-0, and goes on the road for the first time this season to play at Belleville East next week, with both games kicking off at 7 p.m.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
