The varsity football team blitzed through the Hinsdale South Hornets on Friday, Oct. 4 to secure a win against their biggest conference rivals. This game is also referred to as the “cannon game” since the winner gets to keep a minature cannon at their school for the rest of the year. The Mustangs succeeded in protecting their winning streak, and the cannon stayed in DGS halls.
Head varsity football coach Mark Molinari elaborated on the significance of this particular matchup.
“We want to win the cannon. It’s kind of like a Downers North game, this game means just as much to us,” Molinari said.
The Mustangs and Hornets were neck-and-neck until the last quarter, where DGS pulled ahead to make the score 31-28.
Senior wide receiver Cameron Kasper scored two touchdowns, the first off of a 63 yard pass and the other with a diving catch.
“I just wanted to ball out this game,” Kasper said. “I knew it was a big game, knew a lot was on the line. It was a fun game and good win.”
The win was not an easy one: the Mustangs acquired ten penalties, there were four major injury timeouts and mental intimidation was employed on both sides.
Molinari described how he practices mental toughness with his players.
“We work on this every day in practice. We call it getting in deep water. We want to be in deep water in practice, and our kids responded when it was time,” Molinari said.
Senior tight end and defensive tackle James Pieropoulos made huge offensive contributions, scoring a touchdown with 3:27 left in the third quarter to put the Mustangs ahead going into the last minutes of the game.
Pieropoulos also made a big catch in the fourth quarter that allowed the Mustangs to score the winning field goal.
“Coming into this game, we knew we were gonna get a win. We knew it was gonna be tough, and we just came out here, grinded out and got a hard one. But those are the best ones,” Pieropoulos said.
The fourth quarter was the most decisive one. After sophomore Josh Muhwezi scored a field goal with one minute left in the game, the Hornets had a chance to win.
Junior linebacker Arnas Ramanauskas had a strong defensive performance, sacking the Hinsdale South quarterback with seven seconds to go. Kasper intercepted a pass at the two second mark but a flag on the play gave the Hornets the ball back.
In the last play of the game Hinsdale South overshot their snap, allowing the Mustang defense to capitalize and finalize the victory.
“We really pulled through in the second half. We grinded out, won by a field goal and executed on our special teams. Everyone gave their best effort and that just culminated in a great win,” Pieropoulos said.
Kasper explained how this win will impact the team going forward.
“Big confidence booster for sure, knowing that we’re the best team in the conference. [We’ll] keep that going, run through the rest of conference, get to the playoffs and do our thing,” Kasper said.
The Mustangs will play at Leyden on Friday, Oct. 11 as they try to defend their number one position in the West Surburban Gold Conference.
