4th-quarter comeback propels Unity to Class 3A football championship game

The last time the Rockets played a semifinal football game at home there was three inches of slush on the grassy turf of Hicks Field. Brutally cold with a sustained 15 mile an hour crosswind gusting to 30 at times, last Saturday's weather conditions were in stark contrast to that of the Blizzard Bowl of 2015.

Under a cloudless blue sky and gentle rays of sunlight heating the barely two-year-old artificial turf, the outcome, played by seniors who were still in junior high during the Blizzard Bowl, was identical. Three quarters of solid defensive play yielded yet another shot at a football state title, the sixth since 1994 when head coach Scott Hamilton took the reigns, after defeating visiting Mt. Carmel, 28-21.

Head coach Scott Hamilton is congratulated by fans after Unity's 28-21 win over Mt. Carmel. Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks

"What a crazy game," Hamilton said while Unity players and fans celebrated the team's fourth 2021 playoff victory. The number one seed in the southern playoff bracket, the Rockets played all four postseason games at Hicks Field. "We'll enjoy this one and wake up tomorrow morning and give her hell."

The Rockets jumped out in front on their first possession on an 87-yard drive capped off with quarterback Blake Kimball sprinting three yards toward the southeast court of the end zone, and to the dismay of dozens of Golden Aces fans along the barrier behind the end zone, diving just inside the orange pylon for the first TD of the game.

---

PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks

With a little help from teammate Camden Mette, Unity's Boden Franklin strips the ball from Mt. Carmel's Blayne Sisson during first quarter action. The Rockets recovered the fumble to set up their next scoring drive. See more game photos from iphotonews.com.

---

Three minutes later, thanks to a fumble forced by junior Boden Franklin, Kimball was back in the end zone after a two-yard run to put his team up 13-0. With another easy PAT and looking at 14-point first-quarter deficit, Mt. Carmel was shell-shocked. Or, so it seemed.

Shaking it off, the Golden Aces started pulling them out of their sleeve. The first, with less than a minute on the scoreboard, Zeke Hadra scored on an 11-yard run. Then, a second barely two minutes into the second quarter to tie the ballgame up at 14-all courtesy of Mt. Carmel quarterback Blayne Sisson's 70-yard gallop through the Rocket defense.

Mt. Carmel wasn't finished. Hadra threw down another ace in the form of a 10-yards touchdown sending both teams into the locker room with MTC looking golden at 21-14.

"Everything looked so bad the whole second quarter, the whole third quarter, and we couldn't do anything," Hamilton said.

Though it has been a rare occurrence for the Rockets to be behind on the scoreboard, teams don't win 17-straight football games by giving up.

"For whatever reason, whether it was the Monticello game, or if you look back to some of the other games last year, they just hung in there," Hamilton said. He also highlighted his team's struggle against Paxton-Buckley-Loda, whose football program loudly announced their entrance into the mighty Illini Prairie Conference this year. He was proud of how they responded with their 'it ain't over until its over' attitude. "They just don't ever give up on each other."

In the first series of the fourth quarter, Rockets' Will Cowan snags a interception in the Unity end zone. Taking full advantage of the opportunity, Kimball and Matt Brown, who broke out for a 56-yard run on the drive, move the ball down the field. Pushed out of bounds at the 15-yard line, the Rockets had to wait until Kimball barreled into the east end zone for a third time to tie up the score.

"These guys just don't quit," Hamilton said, holding back tears of joy. "Their character is unbelievable."

Re-energized the Unity defense squad created another scoring opportunity with another interception. Camden Mette comes up big with 6:40 left in the fourth quarter. Not long after that, Brown finds his way into the end zone and the Rockets get the PAT to go up 28-21. The Rockets are just 5 minutes, ten seconds away from going to state.

"As he does all the time, Coach (Tony) Reetz got it figured out upfront," Hamilton said. A couple of defensive stops, a little game-clock finesse, and Unity would be preparing to play their 14th game this season. "Coach (Dave) Fink and our defensive guys took care of it on that end, and it's off to DeKalb we go."

Refusing to give up ground, the Unity defense stood tall stalling Mt. Carmel's desperate efforts to get a first down. The Rockets take control of the ball on their own 40 and meticulously wind down the clock down for the win.

Next up, the final test. Unity, who will play its first postseason road game at Huskie Stadium on the campus of Northern Illinois University, will square off against Byron.

The Tigers, who will make their third consecutive state final appearance, lost both previous contests by four points. In 2018, Monticello prevailed at Memorial Stadium, 24-20, and Williamsville held on to beat Byron 46-42 in DeKalb for the 2019 title.

Game time is at 4pm.

With more workers struggling with the pandemic’s aftermath, employers begin to expand mental health benefits

Photo: Farah/Burst

by Michelle Andrews
Kaiser Health News

As the covid-19 pandemic burns through its second year, the path forward for American workers remains unsettled, with many continuing to work from home while policies for maintaining a safe workplace evolve. In its 2021 Employer Health Benefits Survey, released Wednesday, KFF found that many employers have ramped up mental health and other benefits to provide support for their workers during uncertain times.

Meanwhile, the proportion of employers offering health insurance to their workers remained steady, and increases for health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket health expenses were moderate, in line with the rise in pay. Deductibles were largely unchanged from the previous two years.

“With the pandemic, I’m not sure that employers wanted to make big changes in their plans, because so many other things were disrupted,” said Gary Claxton, a senior vice president at KFF and director of the Health Care Marketplace Project. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

Reaching out to a dispersed workforce is also a challenge, with on-site activities like employee benefits fairs curtailed or eliminated.

“It’s hard to even communicate changes right now,” Claxton said.

Many employers reported that since the pandemic started they’ve made changes to their mental health and substance use benefits. Nearly 1,700 nonfederal public and private companies completed the full survey.

At companies with at least 50 workers, 39% have made such changes, including:

• 31% that increased the ways employees can tap into mental health services, such as telemedicine.
• 16% that offered employee assistance programs or other new resources for mental health.
• 6% that expanded access to in-network mental health providers.
• 4% that reduced cost sharing for such visits.
• 3% that increased coverage for out-of-network services.

Workers are taking advantage of the services. Thirty-eight percent of the largest companies with 1,000 or more workers reported that their workers used more mental health services in 2021 than the year before, while 12% of companies with at least 50 workers said their workers upped their use of mental health services.

Thundermist Health Center is a federally qualified health center that serves three communities in Rhode Island. The center’s health plan offers employees an HMO and a preferred provider organization, and 227 workers are enrolled.

When the pandemic hit, the health plan reduced the copayments for behavioral health visits to zero from $30.

“We wanted to encourage people to get help who were feeling any stress or concerns,” said Cynthia Farrell, associate vice president for human resources at Thundermist.

Once the pandemic ends, if the health center adds a copayment again, it won’t be more than $15, she said.

The pandemic also changed the way many companies handled their wellness programs. More than half of those with at least 50 workers expanded these programs during the pandemic. The most common change? Expanding online counseling services, reported by 38% of companies with 50 to 199 workers and 58% of companies with 200 or more workers. Another popular change was expanding or changing existing wellness programs to meet the needs of people who are working from home, reported by 17% of the smaller companies and 34% of the larger companies that made changes.

Beefing up telemedicine services was a popular way for employers to make services easier to access for workers, who may have been working remotely or whose clinicians, including mental health professionals, may not have been seeing patients in person.

In 2021, 95% of employers offered at least some health care services through telemedicine, compared with 85% last year. These were often video appointments, but a growing number of companies allowed telemedicine visits by telephone or other communication modes, as well as expanded the number of services offered this way and the types of providers that can use them.

About 155 million people in the U.S. have employer-sponsored health care. The pandemic didn’t change the proportion of employers that offered coverage to their workers: It has remained mostly steady at 59% for the past decade. Size matters, however, and while 99% of companies with at least 200 workers offers health benefits, only 56% of those with fewer than 50 workers do so.

In 2021, average premiums for both family and single coverage rose 4%, to $22,221 for families and $7,739 for single coverage. Workers with family coverage contribute $5,969 toward their coverage, on average, while those with single coverage pay an average of $1,299.

The annual premium change was in line with workers’ wage growth of 5% and inflation of 1.9%. But during the past 10 years, average premium increases have substantially exceeded increases in wages and inflation.

Workers pay 17% of the premium for single coverage and 28% of that for family coverage, on average. The employer pays the rest.

Deductibles have remained steady in 2021. The average deductible for single coverage was $1,669, up 68% over the decade but not much different from the previous two years, when the deductible was $1,644 in 2020 and $1,655 in 2019.

Eighty-five percent of workers have a deductible now; 10 years ago, the figure was 74%.

Health care spending has slowed during the pandemic, as people delay or avoid care that isn’t essential. Half of large employers with at least 200 workers reported that health care use by workers was about what they expected in the most recent quarter. But nearly a third said that utilization has been below expectations, and 18% said it was above it, the survey found.

At Thundermist Health Center, fewer people sought out health care last year, so the self-funded health plan, which pays employee claims directly rather than using insurance for that purpose, fell below its expected spending, Farrell said.

That turned out to be good news for employees, whose contribution to their plan didn’t change.

“This year was the first year in a very long time that we didn’t have to change our rates,” Farrell said.

The survey was conducted between January and July 2021. It was published in the journal Health Affairs and KFF also released additional details in its full report.

Subscribe to KHN's free Morning Briefing.