Amboy punches ticket to eight-man state finals with win over St. Thomas More

AMBOY – It’s not an easy thing to watch another team celebrate on your home field, with a state finals berth on the line.

The Amboy-LaMoille-Ohio football team avoided that scenario on Saturday afternoon, following a 54-22 rout of Champaign St. Thomas More in the Illinois 8-Man Football Association playoff semifinals. It helped erase the memory of a loss to Orangeville in the 2021 semifinals, also at The Harbor.

[ Photos from Amboy-LaMoille-Ohio vs. St. Thomas More in an I8FA state semifinal ]

For the Clippers (10-2), the run to state has been anything but easy. The team’s lone senior, Tucker Lindenmeyer, missed significant time with a hamstring injury, and other key players left the team for their own reasons.

On Saturday, however, it was all smiles on a field covered with a mixture of red and back confetti, along with a dusting of snowflakes.

“We went through so much adversity this year, that I don’t think any other team has,” junior running back Landon Whelchel said. “Us getting here, beating them, going to state for the first time since ‘84, it’s just the best feeling in the world.”

The road to state was paved with a relentless rushing attack that produced 423 yards on 66 attempts. Whelchel (26 carries, 182 yards, 3 touchdowns), Quinn Leffelman (29-166, 3 TDs) and Lindenmeyer (10-77) made life miserable for the Sabers’ defense all day.

“We’ve been practicing all week just for this defense, and we all just executed what we were supposed to do,” Whelchel said. “When you execute everything, you win.”

A steady diet of Leffelman in the second half, when he had 18 carries for 106 yards, allowed Amboy to control the clock and keep the ball away from a dangerous St. Thomas More offense led by senior quarterback Matt Delorenzo. He guided his team to a 44-38 upset of previously undefeated Decatur Lutheran-Mt. Pulaski in the quarterfinal round.

Leffelman had the lone score of the second half, an 8-yard run with 6:56 to play.

“I didn’t ask for the ball, but I wanted it really bad,” Leffelman said. “Every time I got the ball, I wanted to take advantage of it. We moved the ball really well in the second half.”

Amboy raced out to a 14-0 lead on Whelchel TD runs of 6 and 27 yards in the first 9 minutes of play, then seized total control with a 34-point explosion in the second quarter. Whelchel started the onslaught with a 57-yard touchdown run, then Brennan Blaine turned a short completion from Lindenmeyer into a 71-yard scoring play.

Leffelman scored on a pair of short TD runs to up the Amboy lead to 42-16 with 1:48 left in the first half, but there were plenty of fireworks still in store before the break.

St. Thomas More (8-4) moved 68 yards in eight plays, capped by a 13-yard scoring run from Delorenzo, to get within 42-22 with 14.2 seconds on the clock.

On the ensuing kickoff, Whelchel returned the ball 35 yards to the St. Thomas More 34, with 5.5 seconds to go. On the half’s final play, the 6-foot-2 Blaine out-jumped Sabers defender Ben Horn, who stands 6-3, for a stunning TD. It was a play from which St. Thomas More never recovered.

Each team had two second-half turnovers, helping to keep the score where it was at most of the way. The Sabers also hurt themselves with 10 penalties for 90 yards.

“I think it was more about us,” St. Thomas More coach Nathan Watson said. “We didn’t make plays this week that we made last week. There were some crucial calls at crucial times. I don’t know if it was so much Amboy as we just didn’t execute to the best of our ability.”

St. Thomas More had just two offensive touchdowns, on runs of 37 and 13 yards by Delorenzo in the second quarter. The Sabers’ first TD was a 75-yard kickoff return by Horn with 2:43 left in the first quarter.

Horn is part of a strong junior class for a St. Thomas More squad that will return virtually intact in 2023, minus Delorenzo.

“It’s a good position to be in,” Watson said. “We’ll get another quarterback, but I’m concerned about leadership. That young man has the best leadership out of a high school student I’ve ever seen, so we will definitely miss that. We’ll be all right. We’ll lick our wounds and get back to work.”

For the Clippers, who also have just one senior on their roster, the future is now. On Friday night at Monmouth College, they will take on West Central, which survived a 50-48 nail-biter against Polo in its semifinal.

West Central handled Amboy 68-30 in a running-clock game back in Week 9.

“Ever since last year when we lost in the semifinal game, we’ve been working our tails off to get to state,” said Blaine, an all-stater who had three catches for 131 yards and two scores on Saturday. “It feels great to get there. We knew if we did get there, we’d meet West Central. They’re a great team all around. They’ve got three really great players in the backfield, but anything can happen in Monmouth. We’re playing our best football of the year right now, and I think it’s going to be a good one.”

Amboy played that Week 9 game against West Central without Lindenmeyer, who was still on the mend from a strained right hamstring suffered in Week 4 against Milford-Cissna Park. He has played in all three playoff games thus far, though he spent much of the second half of Saturday’s game against St. Thomas More on the sideline. He stressed it was a precautionary measure.

“Over the week in practice, I’ve been having groin issues, and I think it just got inflamed from over-working it,” Lindenmeyer said. “Coach didn’t want to risk me getting hurt even worse for next week. We had a good, sustainable lead, and they called it quits on me. I think it’s from past injuries, but we’ll wrap it tight and I should be good for next week.”