Next stop: Champaign

This time, the proverbial door got knocked to the ground.

Knocking at the door with back-to-back state semifinal losses the past two years, Prairie Ridge’s football team finally busted through with a hard-fought, 33-22 victory over top-seeded Batavia (12-1) in Saturday’s Class 6A semifinal held at Bulldog Stadium.

Prairie Ridge (12-1) will advance to the 6A state championship game Nov. 26 in Champaign against Peoria Richwoods (10-3), which upset previously unbeaten Lemont 34-31 in double overtime in Saturday’s other semifinal clash.

“Words can’t describe how I feel,” said senior fullback Connor Greenwald, who rushed for 226 yards and a pair of touchdowns. “I’m just so happy for my team. We’ve all worked hard to get to this point.

“Losing (in the semifinals) these past two seasons was really tough, especially last year when basically we beat ourselves (in a 14-7 loss to Rockford Boylan). We didn’t want to do that today," added Greenwald.

Trailing 14-13 at halftime, the Wolves tallied 20 unanswered points to build a 33-14 lead early in the fourth quarter.

Junior safety Sean Folliard jarred the ball loose from Batavia tight end Cole Gardner on a fourth-and-two play at the Wolves’ 18-yard line to stop a Bulldog drive.

“That was a big stop,” said Wolves coach Chris Schremp, “and then we got our option going.”

Nine plays later, Jordan Getzelman scored on an 18-yard touchdown run to give the Wolves a 20-14 lead with 3:44 left in the third quarter.

On the next series, senior linebacker Josh Hrudicka continued to swing momentum toward the Wolves with his 37-yard interception return for a touchdown. Prairie Ridge led 26-14 after three quarters.

“There were some plays near the end of the third quarter that kind of dug ourselves a little more of a hole than we needed or I really thought we could have won the game,” said Batavia coach Dennis Piron.

Greenwald’s 25-yard TD run on the first play of the fourth quarter stretched the Wolves’ lead to 19 with 11:52 remaining.

That was when the Bulldogs began to mount a comeback.

Noel Gaspari, who was 28-of-48 for 363 yards and three touchdowns, engineered a 5-play, 48-second drive, capped by a 4-yard TD pass to Evan Zeddies. Gaspari’s two-point pass to Jon Gray cut the Wolves’ lead to 33-22.

After forcing a Prairie Ridge punt, an apparent 28-yard TD pass to Gray was nullified by an illegal block penalty.

With 3:18 left, Folliard took the ball away from Zeddies in the end zone for his second interception of the game, setting off a wild celebratory scene on the Wolves’ sideline.

“If you think they’ve got the ball, you take it away,” said Folliard. “You knock the ball out any way you can.”

Piron saw things from a different perspective.

“Two really tough calls took away two touchdowns,” said the Baatvia coach. “This is not going to be easy to get over for a long time for these boys or for these coaches. We fought to the bitter end.”

So did the Wolves’ defense against a pass-happy Bulldog attack.

“Until the time ran out, I was nervous,” said Schremp. “They got the job done today against a real good Batavia team.”

“We haven’t seen a team like this all year,” said Wolves defensive coordinator Andrew Petersen. “But we’ve got a lot of guys who believe. It was a great effort collectively. They weren’t going to let another one slip away.”