After six rigorous practices, the juniors and seniors took the field in Joliet West’s last Powder Puff game on grass. The class of 2011 was ready for their senior victory after last year’s lose but faced a challenge with a group of well-prepared junior girls that weren’t willing to lose without a fight.

Prior to the game, the seniors were determined to win considering their experience from last year, this year’s distribution of important offense positions, and plentiful number of team members. Unlike the junior team, they picked right back up from where they started last year. “This year we focused more on team speed and putting our athletes in position to make plays on both sides of the ball.  We spent more time this year having our offenses compete live against our defenses.  We know this will provide us with game speed experience,” Coach Plechaty said.

While the senior coaches and players thought the junior team would be running through positions and the basic rules of the game during practices, they were obviously mistaken. “We accomplished more this year and prepared our junior girls by explaining the game on a board during the first practice. After that, the rest of the practices ran more smoothly,” Coach Suca said.

Suca also believed that the juniors would win because their team consisted of a lot more junior athletes from spring sports.

However, senior coaches noticed that they were putting the same offense players in during the game. Seniors thought that their wide range of defense team would wear the juniors out.

The seniors set the tone and took the lead in the first quarter when Jackie Wysocki made a six point touchdown pass. When the seniors felt like they had nothing to worry about, the juniors stepped up their game in the second quarter when Kendall Tiller ran a six point touchdown for the juniors. The juniors saw another victory from the same offense team in a matter of seconds when Taylor Adler ran a two-point conversion through the end zone bringing the juniors 8-6 against the seniors at half time.

But the class of 2011 wasn’t ready to experience another loss for their team. They ran back in the field ready to show the juniors what they were made of. But the juniors weren’t going to let the seniors take control. Daviona Ervins sprinted across the field and ran another touchdown pass for the juniors.

The pressure was on for wide receiver Alicia Martin when there was only seven minutes left of game time and the juniors were winning 14-6. She brought the score back up 14-12 with the last touch down pass of the night.

After four downs in the fourth quarter, and two minutes left on the clock, the seniors defense took the field and the team accepted their loss for the second year in a row. As for the juniors, 2010 was a proud year for them to call themselves winners.

“We played hard and it paid off. After getting over the nerves I had in my stomach, I had fun and tried to play fair. Scoring one touchdown helped that a lot. That and then Adler’s  two-point conversion. Once that second touchdown was scored I had no nerves at all. It was a good game for me and for the junior class,” Daviona Ervins said.