Chester advances to Elite Eight
<span>JOHNSTON CITY -- The next one's better.</span>
<span>Wyatt Ruehling ran for two touchdowns and threw for another, and Chester avenged a Week 5 loss to Johnston City with a 35-7 win over the Indians on Saturday at Ralph Davison Field in the IHSA Class 2A Sweet 16.</span>
<span>The third-seeded Yellow Jackets will host No. 5 Tuscola, a 28-21 winner over No. 1 Lawrenceville, on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. in the Elite Eight. This is the first time Chester (10-1) has both advanced past the second round and won 10 games in program history.</span>
<span>"It's amazing, this is school history for us," Lee said. "To do this in a year when people didn't really have a very high expectation, we've said that before, this is rare air for us."</span>
<span>Charles Morefield ran for 66 yards and a touchdown, while Blake Eggemeyer added 72 yards and a score. Chester broke open a 7-7 game in the second quarter with 28 straight points.</span>
<span>"We ran out of luck this week," said Johnston City coach Dan Mings, whose team finished at 9-2. "Our kicker went down, one of our running backs went down, obviously our quarterback goes down and we paid the price for being healthy all year."</span>
<span>The game started in the worst possible way for Johnston City. The Indians' Luca Gualdoni mishandled a punt attempt deep in Johnston City territory, giving Chester a first-and-goal on the 5.</span>
<span>Ruehling punched it in on the next play, giving the Yellow Jackets a 7-0 lead with 9:43 left in the first quarter after Christian Gray tacked on the extra point.</span>
<span>On Johnston City's ensuing possession, Indians quarterback Dakota Edwards suffered a compound fracture in his leg on a quarterback sweep and had to be removed from the field on a stretcher.</span>
<span>The Indians used the lengthy medical delay to regroup and tied the game on a 23-yard run by Nick Summers with 11:51 left in the second quarter. Summers finished with a team-high 49 yards on 11 carries for Johnston City.</span>
<span>"When your leader goes down, your quarterback goes down, it's an issue," Mings said. "That's the way that this thing works. We tried as hard as we could, this is just the end of the road."</span>
<span>Just like last week against Carmi-White County, Chester's run defense performed well in limiting Johnston City to just 139 yards rushing as a team.</span>
<span>Luke Hartman recovered an Indian fumble and Jordan Berner picked off backup Johnston City quarterback Keith Galbraith to further keep the home team in check.</span>
<span>The 6-foot-5 Berner has three interceptions thus far this postseason, and had four catches for 58 yards on offense.</span>
<span>"I think it's just the 'Common Joe' aspect of this team," Lee said. "We didn't get a whole ton of kids all-conference and we don't have a whole lot of all-stars and there's nobody that you can stop just that guy.</span>
<span>"Obviously, Berner's come into that role a little bit. This is kind of a no-name team that's gotten everything through work."</span>
<span>A 1-yard run by Eggemeyer with 4:53 left in the second quarter gave Chester a 13-7 lead after Gray's extra point try was blocked.</span>
<span>The Yellow Jackets extended their lead to 21-7 about four minutes later when Hunter Howie hauled in a 31-yard pass from Ruehling for a score and Issiac Wingerter added the two-point conversion.</span>
<span>Ruehling added a 2-yard TD with 1:21 left in the third quarter and Charles Morefield completed the scoring with 1:17 remaining in the fourth on a 16-yard run.</span>
<span>"I think our speed on defense was good, we were able to negate some of their size," Lee said. "I thought we played much better sideline-to-sideline than we have and three of our last four games we've held our opponent to one touchdown."</span>
<span>Tuscola (9-2) is a member of the Central Illinois Conference and will make the almost 200-mile journey south to W.O. Smith Field. The Warriors are coached by Rick Reinhart, who won the Class 1A state title in 2009 with Tuscola and led the school to runner-up finishes in 2010 and 2011.</span>
<span>Reinhart is 60-24 in seven seasons with Tuscola. The Yellow Jackets and Warriors last faced each other in 1996, with Tuscola coming away with a 49-8 victory.</span>
<span>The winner of Saturday's game will face the winner of No. 5 Athens (8-3) and No. 6 Maroa-Forsyth (8-3) in the semifinals.</span>