Brock Pettaway could have entered his senior year as Naperville North’s No. 1 receiver.
That changed when stars Quinn Morris and Chico Thomas transferred to the school from Plainfield East and Bolingbrook, respectively. A lot of the targets, and much of the media attention, went to the new guys. But that was OK with Pettaway.
“We’re brothers outside of football,” Pettaway said. “We really appreciate each other and just want the best for each other.
“So when it comes in between the lines, that kind of stays. I want the best for Quinn and Chico, and vice versa.”
The 5-foot-10, 165-pound Pettaway may not have gotten the publicity he warranted, but he did two things Morris and Thomas did not do this season.
Those include a touchdown pass, which Pettaway threw early in the 13th-seeded Huskies’ game against 20th-seeded Maine South in the first round of the Class 8A playoffs in Naperville on Saturday night.
It happened on the first play of Naperville North’s second possession. Senior quarterback Jacob Bell, a Ball State commit, lateralled to his left to Pettaway, who found Morris for a 63-yard touchdown to tie the game at 7-7 with 5:50 left in the first quarter.
It was Pettaway’s first career completion.
“We worked on it a lot in practice,” he said. “When I heard it get called, I obviously got excited. Nothing better than throwing to my best friend.”
Pettaway’s throw found Morris wide open at Maine South’s 35-yard line. Morris then cut back all the way across the field to score.
“I was like, ‘Oh, he’s about to score, and I’m about to get a touchdown pass,’” Pettaway said. “It was a great play, so I was excited.”
So was Bell.
“We’ve been kind of waiting to use it,” Bell said. “Brock is one of our receivers who has a great arm, so if I went down, he’d probably come in, actually.
“We try to use our decoy of him running a bunch of bubble screens to get them to come up. He threw over the top, and it worked perfectly.”
But Maine South continued to score points and held on late to win 49-42 as sophomore quarterback Jameson Purcell completed 39 of 51 passes for 493 yards and six touchdowns.
Bell and the Huskies (7-3) were almost as good in a shootout that produced 1,179 yards of total offense. Bell completed 34 of 48 passes for 417 yards and four touchdowns and also scored on a 1-yard run. His last two TD passes against the Hawks (7-3) went to Pettaway, first a 15-yarder with 11:18 left in the fourth quarter and then a 35-yarder at the 6:22 mark.
Junior defensive back Quincy Blaise’s interception at Naperville North’s 27-yard line with 3:00 left gave Bell and the offense time to tie it, but the drive ended at Maine South’s 28.
“We’ve been doing that all season, battling adversity and just coming back from large deficits,” Bell said. “We said if our defense can get us a couple stops, we’ll be back in this game. They did exactly that, and we almost got back.”
The passing statistics were otherworldly. Thomas had 13 catches for 190 yards, Morris had 11 catches for 167 yards and Pettaway had seven catches for 98 yards.
“We’ve just got heart, and we’ve got a lot of guys that can make a lot of plays,” Pettaway said. “We’re a hardworking team, and we just went to work.”
Pettaway, a three-year varsity player, finished the season with 59 catches for 762 yards and 10 touchdowns, which ranked second on the team behind Morris’ program-record 15 touchdowns.
“He’s one of my best friends,” Bell said of Pettaway. “He’s just a real consistent guy. He makes my job extremely easy as a quarterback. He makes three or four people miss and makes something happen even if I make the wrong read.
“That’s kind of my comfort guy as a quarterback. He’s always making something happen as a receiver. So I appreciate him.”
Pettaway, whose older brother Luke is a redshirt freshman defensive back at Purdue, hopes to play college football too. But he will cherish his memorable final high school season, which included the other thing Morris and Thomas didn’t do and no other Naperville North receiver had done before: score four touchdowns in a game. Pettaway did that during the Huskies’ 63-62 double-overtime win against Homewood-Flossmoor in Week 7.
“The whole experience was great — great culture, great coaches and people,” Pettaway said. “I can go on and on, but overall it was amazing.”
Matt Le Cren is a freelance reporter.
