Team

Brookfield

Record	Div.	Conf.
3/7	Div. VI	All-American Conference Blue Tier

Team

LaBrae

Record	Div.	Conf.
10/2	Div. V	All-American Conference Blue Tier

Warriors QB rushes for 194 yards and TD against LaBrae

By John Bassetti

sports@vindy.com

BROOKFIELD

Quarterback Augustus Necastro, who entered the game with 1,489 yards passing, rushed 34 times for 194 yards to help Brookfield beat LaBrae, 19-14, on Friday night.

The win put the Warriors in position to claim at least a share of the All-American AthleticConference’s Blue Tier title if his team wins one of its remaining two games.

“It’s phenomenal,” Brookfield coach Randy Clark said. “We’re back in a league and it’s the first time we have an opportunity to win a championship.”

Clark’s ebullience may have gotten the best of him, but he insisted that the win was the biggest in his 15 years at Brookfield.

“We had a few kids who had a total of maybe three minutes of varsity and each had an interception,” Clark said of sophomores Bryce Randall and Alex Bell. “We were throwing guys in positions they never really played before.”

They were filling in for several injured Brookfield players, including Kasey Tingler, who scored his team’s first touchdown before adding a pair of field goals, then not returning in the second half because of an injured shoulder he suffered on the opening kickoff.

The win lifted Brookfield to 7-1 overall and 4-0 in the Blue Tier with remaining games against Campbell and Champion.

Necastro’s 15-yard TD run in the third quarter gave Brookfield a 19-7 lead that held until the last few seconds when LaBrae’s Jacob Percich tallied from 4 yards out, followed by Isaiah Carmichael’s PAT to finalize the scoring.

Necastro’s production wasn’t a one-man show.

“The line opened up holes and Alex Clark took on [blocked] the linebacker — and sometimes four guys himself — and we just played good as a team,” the quarterback said. “Whatever it takes to win.”

Once, Necastro threw while almost parallel to the ground.

“Yeah, I fell sideways a bit [while throwing a pass],” he said of a Brett Favre-like play.

“Right now, we’ve got the inside track to win the league. If we win the last two games, we win the league and get in the playoffs.”

One of the area’s top runners with 773 yards, Keevon Harris, was held to 58 yards on 20 attempts for LaBrae (6-2, 4-1).

Of holding Harris, Clark said, “Our defensive ends and linebackers played a helluva game. “We couldn’t let them bounce outside or get a seam,” he said of clamping down on LaBrae’s perimeter threat.

Those individuals were ends Zach Hackett and Luke Bender and linebackers David Swope and Zach Hosick.

“This is a big game, it’s a league thing and it’s a point thing,” Randy Clark said of the playoff implications. “They were scrappy, but we had to be just as scrappy, if not more.”

The thinning of the ranks, especially Brookfield’s, was characteristic of the teams’ hard-nosed reputations.

Brookfield led in total yards, 298-230.

LaBrae coach John Armeni marveled at Necastro’s 194 rushing yards.

“If you would have told me before the game that he’d thrown for under 100 yards, then I would have said that we’d blow them out of the water. That shows you how versatile he is and how good of a football player he is.”

Armeni said that Brookfield’s coach Clark joked before the game that they’d contain Harris.

“He said what they were going to do and they did a fabulous job,” Armeni said. “We had to allow some other guys to make some plays, but we came up short.”

The Vikings scored first, then were shut out until the last few seconds.

“I’m surprised that we had so much success early, then a lack thereof from that point forward,” Armeni said. “Their guys hit our guys in the mouth, and our guys kept fighting until the end, but we just didn’t make enough plays. It just comes down to ‘can you make plays when you need to?’ They did and we didn’t.”

Armeni was quite complimentary of Brookfield’s quarterback.

“That Necastro is a special kid and that was the difference-maker. They put a lot on his back down the stretch and he made play after play and we had trouble doing that.”