Chambers rallies past Elgin to win D-2 title

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BY KEN HAMBLETON / Lincoln Journal Star

Excuse Jason Cameron if he needs a little break.

The Chambers senior quarterback rushed for 184 yards and two touchdowns as the Coyotes upended Elgin 28-24 Thursday at Memorial Stadium in the Class D-2 state football championship.

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Chambers players celebrate their Class D-2 victory over Elgin at Memorial Stadium Thursday afternoon. The Coyotes beat the Eagles 28-24. (William Lauer)

Chambers players celebrate their Class D-2 victory over Elgin at Memorial Stadium Thursday afternoon. The Coyotes beat the Eagles 28-24. (William Lauer)

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“I’m a little tired, we all are,” said Cameron. “But I think we were afraid, and that gets you going sometimes.”

Cameron threw for a touchdown. He led his team with 15 tackles. He recovered a rare Elgin fumble and had a hand in stopping a fourth-down pass at the goal line that would have given Elgin the lead with 46 seconds left.

“We really wanted this,” said Cameron. “It didn’t seem like we’d get a chance to do much of anything the way Elgin ran on us.”

Elgin, 12-1, dominated the game with 384 yards of total offense on 74 plays. Chambers had the ball less than 30 percent of the game, but still rolled up 316 yards on just 48 plays. Cameron accounted for all but 78 yards of the Coyotes offense.

“Cameron is a great player, slipping through a lot of tackles and making almost every tackle every time I looked up,” said Elgin coach Carlie Wells.

“We fought through a lot of adversity, losing our center to back pain before the game, losing our leading tackler (Tad Henkinius) when he broke his ankle early in the game and getting our fullback (Jonathan Gunderson) pretty banged up,” Wells said.

“But we couldn’t catch up to Cameron often enough, and we lost a fumble and didn’t make the big play at the end,” he said.

Elgin pounded its way to an 8-0 lead. Quarterback Andrew Bauer, who ran for 124 yards and two touchdowns, capped a 10-play drive that followed a drive that stalled on the Chambers two-yard line.

Cameron hit Tyson Owen on a touchdown pass and hit Stephen Franssen on a two-point conversion to tie the game.

After Bauer intercepted a pass, Elgin ground out another touchdown, but Chambers answered with 44 seconds left in the first half to cut the lead to 16-14.

Elgin seemed to put the game out of reach when Matthew Anderson took an option pitch around the right end to give the Eagles a 24-14 lead with 3:28 left in the third quarter.

“We never did stop that option,” said Chambers coach John Miller. “We tried everything you can try and still we never stopped it.

“We just had to hope we’d get a couple of big plays,” he said.

Cameron provided that solution when he scored on a 9-yard run on the first play after the Elgin touchdown and then ran a two-point conversion to cut the lead to 24-22 with 3:11 left in the third.

Elgin went back to it’s standard attack and marched to the Chambers 10, but Curtis Kloppenborg forced a fumble and Cameron recovered to set up the winning 73-yard drive.

Cameron rushed six times for 35 yards on the final drive. He gained 5 yards on a key fourth-down-and-3 at the Elgin 31-yard line.

“We never got in the flow offensively, but we did get some plays to the back side with some great blocks and Cameron’s speed,” Miller said. “I still don’t know how we ever got the ball long enough to get any touchdowns.”

Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or khambleton@journalstar.com.