ROCHELLE — It wasn’t a normal Senior Night for members of the Rochelle Hub varsity football team. For the second time this season, Rochelle saw its opponent forfeit due to COVID-19, and while the Hubs are happy to receive a win to close out the regular season, senior players were disappointed they lost one final opportunity to compete in front of their home fans and friends.

“Losing the opportunity to play tonight hurt, but it helps that we have another week to recover,” senior Braden Alfano said. “We really came together as a team this summer and we knew there were only going to be have around 25 players. This is the first year that I felt like we really came together as brothers and we’ve become a family. We don’t give up on defense, even when the other team scores, and we fight as hard as we can during every drive.”

Making the most of their Senior Night, Rochelle’s varsity players took part in a ceremony Friday evening before watching the fresh-soph football team face off against the Sandwich Indians. The Hubs will enter the playoffs with a 7-2 overall record and a 5-1 record in the Interstate 8/Kishwaukee River Blue Division this season. Rochelle will not only find out its first-round opponent this weekend, but the Hubs will also learn whether they’ll compete in Class 4A or 5A.

“We’re going to be ready to roll when the playoffs come around,” senior lineman Grant Messer said. “I think we really needed that loss against Herscher earlier this season because I thought it woke us up and we learned that we had to play harder. I think it worked because we won six straight to end the season. Our backs are really good, but our offensive line is all about nasty football. We want to get off the ball and our goal is to put the defenders on their backs.”

After finishing 2-4 in the shortened 2020-21 spring season, Rochelle will compete in the playoffs for the first time since 2018. Much of the fast turnaround is due to the team’s significant improvement on offense. The Hubs are averaging over 34 points per game across seven games played and they’ve rushed for 2,300 yards and 32 touchdowns as a team.

Junior running backs Garrett Gensler (708 yards, 16 touchdowns), Trey Taft (650 yards, six touchdowns), Cody Stover-Cullum (479 yards, eight touchdowns) and Landon DeLille (247 yards, two touchdowns) are all averaging over 5 yards per carry. Senior Josh Lloyd (130 rushing yards, 125 passing yards, two passing touchdowns) has limited the turnovers in his second season as Rochelle’s starting quarterback, while senior Marco Castro is 21-for-22 on extra points.

“It was tough to not play tonight but we have another week to get healthy,” Lloyd said. “We’ll have fun this weekend and come back next week ready to go. We had a tough spring, but we went into the summer wanting vengeance and wanting to get better. Our backs and line have worked well together and we have good chemistry as an offense. I think it’s exciting for us seniors to make the playoffs and it’ll be a great experience for our younger guys too.”

Rochelle’s defense has compiled 276 total tackles and eight sacks this season, with the team’s lone interception coming from junior corner and first-year starter Aidan Rodriguez. Junior linemen Jaden Cook, Bradley Cooney and freshman Kaiden Morris each have two sacks, while senior linebacker Tanner Lager leads the Hubs with 33 total tackles. Rochelle’s defensive and special teams units have combined to force three fumbles and recover six fumbles this fall.

“It was tough to find out we weren’t playing on Senior Night,” Lager said. “But we won’t have any injuries heading into the playoffs so that’s a good thing for us. It’s a great accomplishment for us to make the playoffs and I think we can make a run if we continue to play hard like we have over the last few weeks. We’ve all bonded really well and we’re all in it for the team. We’ve been working on some different things defensively and our juniors have stepped up.”