Saxons not happy with being close

Schaumburg's football team was not happy.

A lot of teams would have been if they went on the road and stayed right with Fremd until the bitter end.

But a 25-14 loss was a bitter ending for the Saxons in a showdown for the Mid-Suburban West lead against the four-time defending division champs.

"That's not what we're about," said Schaumburg coach Mark Stilling. "We came here to compete for a championship tonight. We didn't come here to hang with them."

The Saxons showed they were ready on the first play when senior quarterback Cody Logsdon bobbed and weaved his way through Fremd's defense for a 61-yard touchdown.

They became the first team all year to take a halftime lead on the undefeated Vikings when Logsdon rifled a slant that sent Anthony Ianotti off and racing to a 70-yard score.

These were the kind of big plays teams usually don't hit against Fremd's stingy defense.

"We believed we could play with them from the beginning," Logsdon said. "We came out in the first half and played and did what we wanted to do."

Their defense led by Scott Falkner, Brian Anderson and Alex Coglianese hung tough inside its 10 to force Fremd to a go-ahead field goal on its first possession after halftime.

But the Saxons couldn't keep their momentum going with three straight three-and-outs as the Vikings added another field goal and a touchdown.

"We didn't come out and finish," Falkner said.

"In the second half offensively we sort of broke down and had a lot of mental errors, including me," Logsdon said. "We knew they were going to keep coming. We sort of relaxed at the beginning of the second half and gave them hope.

"They competed in the second half and we didn't."

Stilling had no problem with the physical effort. The mental aspect was another story against a Fremd program now in position to win a third straight undisputed West crown.

"I thought there were plays to be made and we didn't finish plays," Stilling said.

But the Saxons still have time to finish better than many figured after starting with losses to state-ranked Maine South and Rolling Meadows.

"We're markedly better today than we were on August 25th," Stilling said. "I don't take anything away from the fact we competed with them.

"But we didn't come to lose by 11 points and hang close."

Which is the big lesson the Saxons will try to parlay into a second straight playoff trip in two more tough games with Palatine and Barrington.

"We want to learn from this like we learned from the first two losses," Logsdon said. "We still have yet to play a complete game offensively and defensively.

"It's scary what could happen when it happens, but we need to get it to happen."