St. Edward players shouted and sang the fight song after drubbing Walther Christian on the road 61-0 Saturday to become the first 6-0 team in school history, but the real celebrating occurred several minutes earlier.
That was during the fourth quarter when the Green Wave’s David Groves caused a fumble and teammate Patrick Brown recovered for the fifth forced turnover of the game by St. Edward’s defense. The noise on the sideline hit its highest decibel level at that moment.
“We were all really excited because coach promised us burritos if we got five turnovers,” defensive captain Chris Kelly said. “We all wanted some hot burritos after a nice, cold day out here.”
St. Edward played like a hungry team from the very start, which hadn’t occurred the previous week when the Green Wave (6-0, 2-0) fell behind Guerin 13-0 before winning 38-21.
The Green Wave piled up a 47-0 lead by halftime and had a running clock the entire second half, as quarterback Joe Mullen threw four TD passes to help the Green Wave secure a playoff berth.
“I think we kind of overlooked Guerin,” Kelly said. “We definitely didn’t want to do that again. We learned our leasson without having to lose a game.”
The defense had interceptions by Groves and Christopher Martinez and fumble recoveries by Joe McFadden and Bryan O’Neill in addition to Brown, helping St. Edward stay atop the Metro Suburban East.
Walther Christian (0-6, 0-2) was held to negative yardage until the Green Wave went up 41-0 in the second quarter, and the offense executed flawlessly all day.
“All week coach Ro (Mike Rolando) had us going through a bunch of drills because we started off flat against Guerin, and we didn’t want to do that,” Mullen said. “The whole team was ready to go and we came out and brought our ‘A’ game.”
Mullen found tight end Nick Duffy for a 29-yard TD pass on the first Green Wave possession, and the offense capitalized on great field position provided by the defense and poor Walther Christian punting to get a 12-yard Mullen-to-Trevor Loewen TD pass, a 24-yard Dwayne Allen TD run and a 21-yard Allen TD run all before the first quarter ended. A 13-yard Mullen-to-Petey DeWindt TD pass, a 40-yard TD pass to Loewen, and scoring runs of 19 yards by Brown and 51 yards by Allen followed.
Allen finished with 100 yards rushing and Mullen with 130 yards passing.
By the time it was over, the poor start in that win over Guerin was a distant memory.
“There was a great sense of embarrassment on my part, on the coaches’ part, on the players’ part, with the whole program to be down 13-0 in that,” Rolando said. “Nothing against Guerin because they came out hard and played well and they beat (Elmwood Park) last night so they’re not a real bad football team. But we shouldn’t have been down.
“The talk all week was starting out fast.”
It also was about making history, although a 6-0 start means very little if a team doesn’t go on to win the conference title.
“I’m happy for the kids right now and I’m happy to hear from the alumni like we have been about our good start,” Rolando said. “We had a couple alumni on the sideline with us [Saturday]. They’re proud of us. We may be the first team from here that’s 6-0 but they don’t look at it as getting records broken. They (alumni) look at it as we’re something they’re proud of.”
