Instant classic: 'Crazy' Boylan vs. Belvidere North game decided on 2-point try in OT

Last year’s game made little sense. Boylan had almost a 3-to-1 edge in first downs, but lost when a backup sophomore kicker booted one of the longest field goals in NIC-10 history with 80 seconds to play.

Friday looked like a replay. The game would have ended in the same exact score if that same kicker hadn’t pushed a 41-yard field goal barely wide right with 52 seconds left. Instead, Boylan edged Belvidere North 35-34 in overtime after blowing a 21-point halftime lead.

“It was insane,” said North kicker Alan Perez, who said he got under his potential game-winning kick a little too much. “I couldn’t believe it. It was crazy.”

“It took a lot of work,” said Boylan's Philip Dixon, who caught the game-winning 8-yard TD pass in overtime. “Last year, they beat us. We thought the same thing was going to happen. We kept pursuing and came out with the win.

“I don’t even know how, but we won.”

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Instead of repeating last year’s 31-28 loss, Boylan woke up echoes of the Boylan teams that won the school’s only two state titles and smashed the previous conference record of 32 straight wins. Those Titans kept that massive 75-game streak alive with a 35-34 win over Hononegah in 2013 and ended it with a 35-34 loss to Hononegah the following year.

This 35-34 win was every bit as tumultuous as those two.

“That’s as good a high school football game as you are going to see anywhere. Anywhere,” Boylan coach John Cacciatore told his team after the game.

“These games,” Boylan receiver and defensive back Santana English said, “are something to live for. This is what you want: A true fight in a football game.”

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The game looked like an early knockout in the first half.

After Belvidere North, ranked No. 10 in Class 6A, took an early lead on Nico Bertolino’s 58-yard run, Boylan scored four straight TDs to lead 28-7 at the half, starting with a 74-yard punt return by English.

Even when North (2-1) stopped Boylan (3-0), it looked like a fluke. North needed three penalties for 35 yards on one set of downs to stop Boylan on its opening drive of the second half, but even then the Titans gained 36 yards on three plays.

But everything changed when North scored twice in the first 85 seconds of the fourth quarter, on a 29-yard fourth down pass to Ethan Tuckley and a 20-yard Bertolino run after a fumbled shotgun snap by Boylan on third-and-1. North wound up stopping Boylan six times in a row, tied the game on a 65-yard run by Erick Roman and then nearly won on Perez’s slightly wide kick.

“Penalties killed us,” English said. “We had penalty after penalty after penalty. It was just killing ourselves.”

Eleven Boylan penalties for 124 yards helped North regroup. But Boylan, ranked No. 5 in Class 4A, regrouped, too.

After Dixon scored in overtime, Boylan’s defense stuffed North three straight times. The Blue Thunder had lost yards on four of their first 46 runs. In OT, they lost yards running on their first three plays, with English, Sonny Jass and Austin Alonso swarming North ball carriers.

“We just had to kick it into another gear,” English said. “We gave up a lot of big plays in the fourth quarter. Overtime was our time to shine. We came out and did that.”

But North didn’t quit. Max Gyllenswan — whose only two completions were fourth-down TDs — threw a 14-yard pass to Bertolino through a crowd of Titans and inched into the end zone.

“They had two guys on me, but I caught it sliding into the end zone and got the ball across the plane,” Bertolino said. “My head might not have been across, but the rest of my body was. Thank God the refs noticed that, too.

“Max, he makes those plays when we need him to. We don’t throw very often, but when we do, we need to complete those passes. That’s what we did to stay in the game. That was the only reason it came down to the wire.”

North then surprised the crowd by going for 2 and the win. Bertolino, who was stuffed trying to run around right end, said “everyone was on board with that call.”

“Boylan scored on their second play,” explained North coach Jeff Beck, “and downs 1 through 3 they drove us back. We didn’t want to get in that 10-yard game.”

Instead, one do-or-die play decided another Boylan classic.

“These games,” Bertolino said, “are what everybody looks forward to.”

Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com, @matttrowbridge or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Boylan football blowout turns into overtime nail-biter vs. North