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Sports

Walovitch Boots Gators To Victory Over Trojans

The senior on his 18th birthday hits 51-yard field goal with six seconds left to give Crystal Lake South 10-7 win over Cary-Grove

It was going to be a big day for Brad Walovitch no matter what happened Friday night against being that it was Walovitch’s 18th birthday.

Walovitch however topped his day off with a game-winning 51-yard field goal with six seconds remaining to give the Gators a 10-7 win over the Trojans in front of over 3,000 fans at Al Bohrer Field to improve to 3-0 on the season.

Walovitch’s kick was likely a school record and tied for 27th-longest field goal in IHSA history.

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Walovitch had missed a 52-yard attempt with three minutes to go that would have given South the lead but Walovitch got a second chance after South’s defense held C-G and then on fourth down, the Gators pulled off a fake punt where Reese Dziedzic ran 15 yards for a crucial first down.

South was stopped during the following set of downs and Walovitch was to attempt a 46-yard kick but a penalty pushed the kick back five yards before Walovitch snuck his second try just inside the right upright.

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Walovitch said that he felt a bit of pressure and had only been making field goals from 45 yards during practice.

“I was a little nervous but at that point, no pressure. I miss, we go to overtime,” Walovitch said. “It wasn’t win or lose so that took a lot of the pressure off myself and I got a ton of support from my teammates.”

The game was billed as a defensive struggle and it lived up to it with just 253 yards of offense combined by the two teams with three of the four quarters featuring one team getting ten yards of offense or fewer.

For South, it was their second straight win over Cary and coach Chuck Ahsmann said credit for the win goes all around.

“I was really proud of our guys,” Ahsmann said. “They (Cary) beat a really good Lake Zurich team last week and it’s tough to stop the option. It’s hard to simulate that in practice. I thought we did a really good job on that. I have to give a lot of credit to our scout team for that.”

Cary (2-1) had their chances in the second half but saw many slip through their fingertips including a halfback option pass by Ryan Mahoney that went through the hands of Connor Carlson and a long pass by Corey Laktas toward a wide-open John Pearl that was dropped. Trojans coach Brad Seaburg said things just didn’t fall his team’s way on the night.

“We didn’t make a play when we needed to,” Seaburg said. “It’s just how it goes. We had a tough time getting anything going and everything we had something going, we had a breakdown here or a breakdown there and the second half we seemed like we were on their side of the field a lot.”

C-G got on the board first after a fumble by South quarterback Austin Fowler that turned into a 17-yard touchdown run by Mahoney one play later.

The score stayed 7-0 into the fourth quarter before Fowler hit Dziedzic for a nine-yard score just under a minute into the final quarter to tie the game before Walovitch’s heroics at the end.

South finished with 165 yards of offense to Cary's 88 yards.

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