When Yorkville needed to make a play, it went to its strength.
Still trailing West Aurora to open the second half Saturday afternoon, the Foxes did what they do best — run the ball.
Senior running back Tre Thomas took a handoff on the first play after halftime, a 5-yard run. On his second, he read the blocks, bounced to the left and sprinted 62 yards to the end zone, giving Yorkville its first lead of the game.
“We’re a team that thrives off energy, and that really gave us energy,” Thomas said. “We were talking in the locker room how we needed to pop a big one and that we were starting to chip away. Right away we did what we wanted to do.”
Yorkville ran for 188 yards, with Thomas and classmate Toran Harris doing much of the damage, as the Foxes grinded out a 21-19 Southwest Prairie West win over West Aurora.
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Thomas finished with 109 yards for the Foxes (5-0, 1-0). Harris added 75 yards on eight carries.
“Our backs are really good,” Yorkville coach Dan McGuire said. “We think our backs are probably the strength of our team, at least offensively.
“But I think our offensive line deserves a ton of credit. They don’t get a whole lot of credit, a whole lot of publicity, but they played really, really well.”
The Blackhawks (2-3, 0-1) put the Foxes in an early hole. Their 13-play, 94-yard drive to open the game was capped on a 12-yard touchdown pass from Will Tammaru to Isaiah Lowry.
West Aurora’s lead grew to 13-3 less than a minute into the second quarter when Derrick Merrell broke through the line for a 66-yard TD run.
Yorkville’s defense turned up the pressure after that.
The Foxes recorded a safety on the next drive and then forced five punts and a turnover on downs on West Aurora’s next six possessions.
“We picked each other up and we just don’t give up on each other,” said Harris, who also plays defensive back. “We’ve been with each other for a long time. We’re all brothers, and when one gets down, we pick another up and keep rolling.”
Yorkville’s offense was stuck in neutral to some degree as well on a day where Thomas and McGuire pointed out how difficult it was to pass. So the Foxes kept pounding the ball.
They broke through again with 1:06 left in the fourth quarter when Harris scored on a 29-yard run. He carried the ball on seven of the drive’s 11 plays.
“My blockers are excellent,” Harris said. “They give me a hole and I just run right through it.”
West Aurora scored on its first play on the next possession, an 80-yard catch and run by Logan Mont, but came up short on a 2-point conversion and the ensuing onside kick.
“They adjusted, we didn’t,” West Aurora coach Nate Eimer said. “We just didn’t have any answers for what they were doing.”
Andrew Wyder is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.