Chicago-Area High School News and Scores | Season Pass

Notre Dame running back Chris James made it four straight games over 100 yards rushing this season as he carried 25 times for a career-high 243 yards and three touchdowns in Notre Dame’s 22-9 win over Marian Catholic in East Suburban Catholic Conference play on Friday night.

“We put in a good week of practice and it paid off for us tonight,” James said. “We know if we work hard in practice it’ll pay off for us.”

James credited the play of his offensive line of Mike Mulcrone, Mike Maligranda, Bobby Deleonardis, Nick Bargione and Sean Nicholson.

“I had some huge holes to run through,” James said. “Those guys did a great job up front dominating the line of play.”

James opened the scoring with a 35-yard touchdown run in the first quarter following an interception by Billy Hirsch. He added an 83-yard touchdown run in the second quarter and closed out the scoring for the Dons (3-1 overall, 1-0 conference) with a 4-yard run in the third quarter.

“We’ve been banking on Chris for four games now,” Notre Dame coach Mike Hennessy said. “Our offensive line did a good job. We’ve been working on getting better every week. We made some adjustments at the half because of what they were seeing in there.”

While the offensive line was dominating Marian, the defensive line with Bargione was keeping the Spartains under control. Marian (0-4, 0-2) managed just 26 yards rushing and was forced to punt nine times. The Spartans did get on the scoreboard in the second quarter on a 41-yard field goal by Chris Taborn. Ki-Jana Crawford caught an 82-yard touchdown pass from Eric Hurley with less than a minute to play to close the scoring.

“It was a good team effort,” Bargione said. “We came out early and dominated the line on both sides of the ball.”

Pick up your local Pioneer Press newspaper on Thursday to read more about the Notre Dame football team.