NORMAL — Mount Carmel has won state titles in several different decades under several different coaches and running several different offenses.
But maybe never have the Caravan won a championship quite like this, overcoming so many hurdles.
“The big challenge for us (is) no Mount Carmel team has won state (after) losing three games,” coach Justin Lynch said. “So for us to go into the playoffs 6-3, that was our challenge. And we really leaned on our seniors to take us.
‘And you know what? We changed things at practice. We practiced a lot harder at playoff time.”
It paid off on Nov. 30, when the Caravan rode another dominant performance from senior quarterback Jack Elliott to a 55-34 win against Batavia in the Class 7A title game at Illinois State’s Hancock Stadium.
The Caravan have won 16 state titles, breaking a tie with Joliet Catholic for the most in IHSA history. The Hilltoppers fell short in their bid for a 16th title earlier in the day but fell 29-27 to Nazareth in the Class 5A final.
Elliott, a Vanderbilt commit, missed time with a midseason injury and was under strict instructions not to run when he returned. But Elliott has been able to use his full skill set as the season wound down and was all but unstoppable.
Against Batavia, Elliott accounted for 407 total yards and seven touchdowns, pushing his season totals to 3,917 yards and 53 TDs.
“I would say it’s pretty special,” Elliott said of the championship. “Just because of that adversity. Not a lot of things went right this year, especially in the regular season when we were just struggling to get to the playoffs.
“Got to the playoffs, had a talk as a team and we knew what we wanted to do. And we just went out and did it.”
Mount Carmel (11-3) led 14-0 before Batavia (12-2) ran an offensive play, scoring on a couple of designed flea flickers wrapped around Tavares Harrington’s recovery of a fumbled kickoff. The first score was a 29-yard pass to Zander Gornan and the second wound up as a 24-yard run by Elliott.
Batavia scrambled back to within 28-21 midway through the second quarter, but Mount Carmel ran off the next 27 points to lead 55-21 with 4:10 left in the game.
Elliott also had touchdown passes of 7 and 33 yards to Quentin Burrell, 22 yards to Cooper Lehman, 17 yards to Stephen Winkler and 15 yards to Danyil Taylor Jr. Lehman caught five passes for 114 yards, both team-highs.
The two touchdowns to Burrell kick-started the surge and made it 42-28 at halftime.
“It was huge,” Elliott said. “As an offense, we just know, the defense gets us the ball (or) special teams gets us the ball, we’re going to score no matter what. There’s no excuses not to score. …
“Defense came out, got a stop to start the half, the game was over.”
Gorman also had a team-high 10 tackles for a Mount Carmel defense that held Batavia scoreless from midway through the second quarter till the final three minutes.
“We had a lot of young guys, a lot of talent (on defense),” linebacker Matt Mucha said. “When adversity strikes, you’ve just got to demand greatness from them. And that’s what we did. …
“It also helps having a great offense to pick us up when we’re down. That gets the guys fired up. But we know who we are … (and) we’ve just got to play to that standard.”
They did, and now they’re stats champs once again.