Chris Georgas scores four TDs, York rolls past Downers Grove South to run win streak to five

Staring at one of the more challenging final thirds of a schedule after a pair of three-point losses, York’s season was seemingly on the brink of collapse heading into week seven.

Then the opposite happened.

Behind four touchdowns from Chris Georgas, the Dukes extended their winning streak to five in a row Friday night with a 42-14 road victory over Downers Grove South in the first round of the Class 8A playoffs.

York (8-3), which closed out the regular season with wins over Downers Grove North, Glenbard West and Lyons before knocking off Bloom in its postseason opener last week, will next travel to take on Loyola. The meeting between the Dukes and Ramblers will be the fourth in the last five years, the most recent in the 2024 state championship.

Georgas found the end zone on three runs and a 38-yard pass from Zack Assaad, all of which came in the first half.

He finished with 115 yards on 14 carries, running behind William Conroy, Brayden Byford, Elias Tamer, Danny Farmer and Owen Roberts, while tallying three receptions for 51 yards.

“Everybody on the team has stepped up,” said Georgas when asked about the late season turnaround. “Everybody has been awesome, especially the O-line. They’ve been phenomenal the last five games and they were perfect today, they created so many holes and made it super easy for me.

“We are a group that gives 100% effort, we are brothers. We do everything for each other.”

Assaad added a 60-yard scoring strike to Jake Tinch which brought on the running clock early in the third quarter. Assaad was 13-of-18 through the air for 217 yards, with his main target being Colton Heilig (5 catches, 86 yards). Will Bute also had a 49-yard TD run from the Wildcat formation in his return from injury.

Defensively, York forced a pair of turnovers - a fumble recovery by Matt Young and an interception by Joey Sica - while holding the host Mustangs to 37 yards of total offense in the opening half.

“We preached it all week,” Young said, “the two biggest things were energy and effort, those are two things you can control. We had to play a better game than we did last week (against Bloom). It was a great team win, all around on all sides of the ball.

“After those two losses (to Oak Park and Hinsdale Central), we knew the schedule we had in front of us but we also knew what we had to do. Those are the teams you want to play, the teams that you want to beat. On the defensive side, I think one of the biggest things is we were tired of getting pushed around. We definitely wanted to start shutting teams down and we’ve been doing that.”

The task will obviously get tougher against Loyola, one of the top programs in the state of Illinois.

“It’s usually been a little further down the road,” said York coach Don Gelsomino, with the other two matchups besides the state title game coming in the semifinals. “They are a very good football team. Number one, you can’t make mistakes and number two, you have to play within yourselves.

“We had some momentum heading into the playoffs and we’ve been able to carry that over. Any game could be your last game and these guys don’t want it to end.”

Downers Grove South (7-3), which won the West Suburban Gold conference title with a perfect mark, was playing without quarterback James Sobkowiak, who recently committed to Arizona State for baseball.

The Mustangs got on the board on the final play of the third quarter with a 67-yard pass from Vincent Junkas to Forest Bates. Junkas also found Nate Thurston for a 27-yard score a short time later.

“We are a good football team,” said DGS coach Mark Molinari, “but didn’t have our best night against a really good team; we knew coming in that we had to play really well. We got to host a playoff game, that was one of our goals, and we won our conference. We had a group of seniors that played hard and were good leaders in the offseason.”