Jackson Rudolph rumbles for 253 yards, Wauconda runs wild in win over Grant

WAUCONDA – After 28 years as head coach at Stevenson and 10 more at Jacobs, Bill Mitz didn’t expect to be calling plays for Wauconda at this point in his career.

But a match that began with a cold call is now thriving in its third season. Against visiting Grant on Friday, junior fullback Jackson Rudolph rumbled for 253 yards on 36 carries as Wauconda won this battle of the Bulldogs 37-13. As a team, Wauconda finished with 497 rushing yards.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” Mitz said. “It’s fun for me, I don’t have to deal with some of those little nagging headaches. I go can coach and have fun with the kids and I really enjoy working with the coaching staff.”

Back in 2022, Wauconda hired a new coach after Dave Mils retired, but things didn’t work out. In a bind, the administration turned to Chris Prostka as an in-house replacement. Prostka said his superintendent came up with the idea of asking Mitz to help him make the transition to head coach.

There wasn’t really any connection that set this in motion, just a friend of a friend type of thing. Mitz had resigned from Jacobs before the pandemic season and was available.

“That’s basically how that started,” Mitz said. “I wasn’t going to come over there until I talked with Chris to see how he felt about all that. Sure enough, we kind of hit it off. I think we spent four or five hours one Saturday talking football.”

In the second season, Mitz took over the playcalling. Wauconda is 21-6 with Prostka as head coach and reached the second round of the playoffs in both 2022 and ‘23.

“For me, it’s incredibly valuable,” Prostka said. “I’ll ask him some questions or he’ll share some ideas. He sees things from the perspective of a guy that has more than 250 varsity wins.

“He’s an old-school guy. He gets after our kids hard, he has high expectations for them, but they also know he cares about them.”

Plenty of Mitz’s football personality was on display Friday. Wauconda’s first offensive possession was 59 yards, 10 plays, all runs. On the second possession, Wauconda converted a fourth-and-4. Reluctance to punt is another famous Mitz trait.

Later in the first half, though, Grant stopped two fourth-down plays and landed a couple of long touchdowns. First, junior running back Tyler Zydon went 75 yards up the middle for a score. Later, quarterback Matthew Gipson hit fellow junior Max Hembrey deep for a 52-yard pass and Grant trailed just 14-13 at halftime.

“They wore us down,” Grant coach Tim Norwood said. “You don’t stop the fullback in that offense, it’s going to be a long night. We had some issues stopping him.”

Rudolph is a legacy. His father, Shawn, was an All-Area player at the school, and now a P.E. teacher and coach on the varsity staff. Rudolph says the day he was born, Wauconda beat Antioch.

“I’ve been here forever, I haven’t left,” Rudolph said. “It’s always great when you have an O-line that can block for you and you’re able to run through the holes as fast as you can. They’re the best O-line in the conference.”

Cole Korycanek added 98 yards rushing for Wauconda. When he did pass, senior QB Logan Olsen went 4 for 4 and also tossed a pair of 2-point conversion passes. He also ran for two touchdowns.

This was a rematch of last year’s first-round playoff game, in which Grant gained more yards but lost 21-20.

Grant has a couple of ex-head coaches of its own. Mills is the team’s defensive coordinator, and former Mundelein coach Ed Whitson, who coached Norwood in high school at Crystal Lake Central, works with the offensive line.

“We took a step last year and some of them thought the next step was going to naturally happen,” Norwood said. “The next step’s even harder. We’re learning that, we’re still young.”

https://www.dailyherald.com/20240927/prep-football/rudolph-wauconda-run-wild-in-win-over-grant/