Missed Tackles Add Up To Missed Opportunity For Kit Girls

Evanston’s second half surge to reach the Elite Eight in flag football last season was largely due to the fact that the Wildkits didn’t miss much on defense.

But missed flag pulls are going to prove costly in their bid to get there again if the Wildkit girls don’t turn it around in a hurry in that area of the game.

Missed flag pulls --- too many to count --- helped Glenbrook South score three second half touchdowns to clinch the Central Suburban League South division championship with an 18-7 triumph over Evanston in Glenview Tuesday.

Evanston had an opportunity to force a three-way tie for the title with Maine South and GBS, but instead settled for third place overall. The Wildkits, now 13-3 overall and 4-2 in the CSL South, play their regular season finale Saturday at Mother McAuley and will take the No. 2 seed into postseason play in the Lane Tech Sectional. Evanston is assigned to the Chicago Academy Regional and will face either Chicago Academy or Roosevelt in the regional opener on Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 4 p.m.

The Kits didn’t exactly put forward a championship-type effort on offense, either, after an 88-yard scoring drive in the first quarter to seize a 7-0 advantage. Quarterback Maggie Conforti scored on a 4-yard run, and also tossed a conversion pass to Harper Wesenberg, but was ineffective after that.

The senior signal-caller completed 15-of-31 passing attempts --- with three interceptions --- for 122 yards and only connected on two of her last 14 tries.

ETHS head coach Carlton Rosemond knows his squad has a lot of work to do in practice before Illinois High School Association postseason play gets underway.

“We’re OK when we have one girl in front of us, but we miss too many flag pulls when we’re in space,” the coach admitted. “Our Achilles heel is that we’re not a good flag pulling (tackling) team, and that’s not typical for an Evanston team. We just have a lot of girls out of position to make plays. We have four new starters on defense this year and their deficiencies rear their ugly heads in big games.

“Our defense played lights out in the first half, I thought, and they kept giving us chance after chance after chance. They did what we needed them to do. But now we’ve got to get back to the drawing board and figure some things out.

“We had an opportunity tonight to do something we hadn’t done yet --- win a conference championship. For 24 minutes, we looked like a team that wanted to do that, but that last 24 minutes was NOT Evanston football. But it’s not the end of the season. Now we just have to create some momentum going into the playoffs.”

Glenbrook South (13-1, 6-0), which is seeded No. 2 in the Buffalo Grove Sectional, displayed an offense that relies more on trickery than execution. Three different quarterbacks --- Cooper Godbout, Addison Garcia and Sienna Gilles --- combined to complete 16-of-25 passing attempts for 136 yards and Godbout contributed 72 yards on the ground, including a 37-yard touchdown run for first Titans’ score with 4:12 left in the third quarter.

South marched 50 yards for the game-winner, a 24-yard pass from Gracia to Godbout down the left sideline as three different ETHS defenders couldn’t grab her hip. The Titans tacked on an insurance score after Evanston turned the ball over on downs in the last two minutes.

Conforti’s longest completion of the day went for just 20 yards and the Wildkits didn’t get close to the red zone following their only scoring drive.

“When Maggie gets in her own head, like she did tonight, she doesn’t see the whole field,” Rosemond pointed out. “We had girls open. But when you always do the same thing (at quarterback) it’s tough to be effective because the defense knows fundamentally what you’re going to do. The goal is to get the ball out of her hands in two seconds --- and not just on the short passes --- but Maggie doesn’t trust herself.”