Hyde Park doesn’t throw the ball often.
If Maasai Gibson didn’t have a heart-to-heart with his mother, the Thunderbirds probably would do it even less.
Mostly a basketball player in recent years, Gibson is back on the field as a senior and adds another dimension to one of the Public League’s last unbeaten teams.
Gibson won a jump ball for a 25-yard TD catch late in the first quarter, and that was enough for Hyde Park to get past Chicago Richards 8-0 Saturday at Stagg Field.
It was his only catch and one of just two completions for the Thunderbirds (7-0, 5-0 Red South-Central), who are heading to the IHSA playoffs for a fourth consecutive season.
Gibson, a 6-6, 230-pounder, played youth football, then got into “one or two” games as a freshman at Ag. Science, where he started his high school career. He transferred to Hyde Park the next year and concentrated on basketball.
“I wanted to play [football] last year, but there was a lot of stuff going on,” Gibson said.
Then this year, “I wanted to, and I talked to my mom and just decided to play.”
Coach Keenan Phillips-Riley is glad he did.
“He’s been a valuable commodity for us,” Phillips-Riley said. “The one thing you can’t coach is size.”
The Thunderbirds are fortunate in that area. Their offense is built around 5-10, 210-pound senior Kenneth Lord running behind a line anchored by 6-foot, 330-pound senior Aaron Matthews and 6-2, 325-pound junior Sedrick Washington.
Matthews and Washington also are stalwarts on Hyde Park’s defensive line.
“They’re tough,” Phillips-Riley said. “And they grind it out as much as they can.”
Lord ran 25 times for 133 yards in a game that zipped along apart from some injury timeouts late.
The second half featured only four possessions, with Hyde Park eating up more than 11 minutes on a 17-play drive that left Richards with fewer than 40 seconds for its last drive. There was still some drama with Donnie Buckner completing a 30-yard pass to Denzell Hill to get the Warriors to the red zone in the closing seconds.
But Hyde Park freshman Anthony Westbrook picked off Buckner in the end zone on the last play to keep the Thunderbirds undefeated. That record is a bit of a surprise, even to Phillips-Riley.
“Were we expecting to be 7-0? By no means,” he said. “Goodness, no. We had no idea, but the kids have bought into the system.”
The latest win moves the Thunderbirds closer to one of their goals: hosting a state playoff game. The hope is that playing at home could help get them off the schneid in the postseason. They’re 0-7 all time in state playoff games.
“That’s our goal for this year, to get our first win in state,” Phillips-Riley said.
For Richards (3-4, 1-4), Buckner was 7-for-11 for 117 yards with one interception. Hill had two catches for 70 yards.
The Warriors are trending upward. Two years ago in their first varsity season after the program was rebooted, they were 0-8. Last year, they went 6-3 in one of the second-tier Chicago sections, earning promotion to the Red South-Central.
“We’re scrappy,” coach Shawn Gray said. “We’re just trying to get better. It’s a different level of football we’re playing now, so we’re trying to adjust.”
The Warriors stayed close despite dressing fewer than 20 players. They’re the smallest school in any of the Red sections with an enrollment of just 219.
“Saturday is tough,” Gray said. “Because if the kids are in the building, they’ll show up. We usually have about 24 or 25. So we missed a few kids and had a couple banged up. We’ll get a couple back next week.”
