With just three minutes left in the first half, Lake Forest was absolutely dominating Zion. Up 21-0, the game was going perfectly for the Scouts. All of a sudden, however, Zion wakes up.
The Scouts fumbled in their own half right before the two-minute warning to give Zion an instant red zone drive. The lead gets cut to 21-6 after Zion capitalizes with a touchdown. Zion steals all the momentum and doesn’t stop there.
The following drive, Scouts junior QB Danny Van Camp gets picked off and Zion takes it all the way to the house to bring their deficit to just one possession.
Van Camp described it as“awful” for the team to commit those two turnovers and get Zion back in the game.
“We were doing a lot of good things throughout the half and to lose all that momentum was certainly disappointing,” said Van Camp.
To make matters worse, on the kickoff to get the ball back, no one for Lake Forest caught the ball and Zion recovered it, regaining possession in opposing territory. The last few minutes in the first half were a disaster.
Losing control of the game, the Scouts knew they had to bounce back and maintain their lead. The defense quickly forced a stop and went into the break still leading by eight points.
Something refueled the Scouts during halftime. They came out hot in the second half with a great special teams punt to Zion’s one-yard line, forced a quick three-and-out to get the ball back, and in just one play, junior Marty Hippel extended the lead with a rushing touchdown.
“The field position was huge. Without the massive stop forced by our defense, I wouldn’t have been set up for that score,” said Hippel. “Both sides of the ball came out from the half with complete harmony.”
The momentum swung back in the Scouts’ favor right after Hippel’s score. They had a 28-12 lead and kept pressing the rest of the half.
Ending the game with a score of 35-26, the Scouts emerged victorious for their homecoming weekend to improve to 3-0 in their conference. They had the weekend to celebrate, but now the focus is on this Friday’s home conference game against Stevenson, who are 1-2 in the conference.
“We’ve done a lot of great stuff as a team, hence the record. We understand that we still have to keep our effort up and just work on the overall game in order to beat Stevenson,” said Van Camp.
