Senior running back Nathan Whitwell loves putting the opponent at wit’s end for Batavia.
Football coaches love having a power player who can salt the game away on the ground with a late lead. And the Bulldogs definitely have one of those in the 5-foot-11, 190-pound Whitwell.
Only Whitwell isn’t wired to just salt the game away. He wants to put the hammer down.
“At Batavia, we’re known for pounding the rock, and we pounded the rock right down their face,” Whitwell said after Friday night’s game. “Dives, leads, we were just running basic stuff.
“We just started getting angrier and playing our game instead of getting into our heads.”
Facing an 11-point deficit, Whitwell got to work, scoring all five of his touchdowns in the second half as Batavia pulled away for a 45-21 DuKane Conference win over St. Charles North.
Whitwell carried the ball a whopping 37 times for 265 yards and ended up with TD runs of 7, 2, 25, 36 and 15 yards for Batavia (4-0, 2-0). Isaiah Brown added four catches for 63 yards.
Joell Holloman ran for 121 yards and a TD on 18 carries and scooped up a bad snap and added another TD on a 15-yard return for St. Charles North (3-1, 1-1). Ethan Plumb completed 16 of 26 passes for 193 yards and a TD. Keaton Reinke hauled in 10 passes for 145 yards and a TD.
Batavia, which trailed 14-3 at halftime, received a simple message in the locker room from coach Dennis Piron.
“He just said, ‘Let’s pick ourselves up,’” Whitwell said. “We’ve got to start playing our game. We have to stop getting into our heads and play our game.”
Whitwell scored his first two TDs to give Batavia its first lead at 17-14. On St. Charles North’s next play, however, Plumb hit Reinke for a 67-yard TD pass to take the lead right back.
The North Stars never scored again, though. Whitwell then put Batavia up 24-21 with 8:40 remaining in the fourth quarter with a 25-yard TD run.
“Our O-linemen really dominated the line of scrimmage,” Piron said. “Really started to feel it — you could sense it. They were excited to get the run game going.”
It began a run of 28 unanswered points in less than seven minutes to turn a tight game into a rout.
Whitwell had 178 yards in the second half. He has rushed for 100-plus yards in all four games.
“He’s such a great kid,” Piron said. “The first play of the game he got hit on his hip and I thought he might be out for the game. He just kept working. He’s just so physically tough.
“And if he gets that extra, he’s gone. He’s got that thing. But he’s not just a speed back. He’s a power back. He can get the hard yards. He just keeps grinding. He doesn’t want to go down.”
The North Stars turned the ball over twice on special teams in the second half, and the Bulldogs scored both times. That contributed to Batavia’s 28-0 finishing kick.
“The wheels kind of came off at the end,” St. Charles North coach Rob Pomazak said. “We have to figure that out. We just didn’t execute in the second half. We had a really good game plan.
“It was just a series of missed executions in the second half where we’re going to have to look at the film and improve upon.”
Whitwell said his 35-carry performance in the season opener at Glenbard West prepared him for Friday night’s moment. Now, he’s what Piron calls “our guy.”
“It was one of the greatest feelings,” Whitwell said. “Coming back out and scoring those touchdowns, it felt like a true blessing, which it was.”
Whitwell knows if the Bulldogs continue to play like they did in the second half, they will be a team nobody wants to face down the stretch.
“Once we get out of our heads and start playing football, I think we’re going to be a scary team,” he said.
Paul Johnson is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
