Catholic schools win at 39th annual Catholic League, CYO championships - especially Loyola, Notre Dame Prep and Catholic Central
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Detroit — Each year, Prep Bowl fills Detroit’s Ford Field with thousands of parents, athletes, cheerleaders, educators and students of high academic achievement. A pinnacle to the school year, its events are centered around championship football games.
Following a number of exhibition games by Catholic Youth Organization teams, St. Anne School in Warren topped St. Regis for the CYO football championship. As for the rest of the day, here’s what happened in the games:
Bulldogs bully Shrine
On paper, Detroit Loyola and Royal Oak Shrine, each sporting an 8-0 record, looked to be a pretty even match-up going into the Prep Bowl C-D championship game.
Before the game, on the sidelines, Lou Miramonti, who retired 10 years ago as the athletic director for nearly three decades at Shrine, voiced his concern about Loyola’s size and speed.
The Loyola roster in the program book listed a dozen players at 200 pounds-plus, averaging 239 a man compared to nine similar specimens on Shrine’s roster, averaging 228 pounds.
Miramonti’s assessment was right on. The Bulldogs’ size and team speed were too much for the Knights to handle. Loyola administered a bruising 40-0 shellacking for the school’s first Prep Bowl title.
Junior quarterback Connor Francek was asked afterwards, “How do you feel?”
“We fought like hell. We didn’t give up,” he responded.
Coach John Goddard, who directed Shrine to Prep Bowl titles in 2000, 2001 and 2008, said, “We got physically beat up. We were hoping the second half would be like the first half (Shrine trailing just 14-0), but their TDs killed us. You can’t do that against a good team.”
Loyola Coach John Cahhalan (who had won Prep Bowl titles in 2006-2007 coaching Pontiac Notre Dame Prep) said he changed the Bulldogs’ power game in the first half to a veer offense after halftime “to open up some holes. We needed to come out and put points on the board.”
He revealed that preparations for the fall season’s success began in the summer with weight training. “A lot of the guys gained 15, 18, 20 pounds, and most of them were sophomores.”
Prime examples such as sophomore linemen on offense and defense: 6’ 6”, 262-pound Malik McDowell and 6’ 3”, 260-pound Chris Davis and 6’ 5”, 260-pound Kajohn Armstrong.
Senior Amos Houston, 6’ 2”, 205 pounds, crossed the goal line twice to give Loyola a 14-0 lead at the half: a 28-yard return of an intercepted pass and on the receiving end of a 61-yard pass play from QB Montel Cooks (6’ 1”, a mere 185).
Loyola put the game out of reach with a pair of touchdowns in each of the third and fourth quarters. Cooks raced 46 yards for one TD and plunged for one yard for another in the third. Junior Sterling Kimbrough covered the last 13 yards of a 14-play, 80-yard workmanlike drive to start the fourth quarter, and senior Jaylin Gaddie raced around end 11 yards for the Bulldogs’ final points of the day.
Shrine’s best chances to score came early and late in the game. In the first quarter, Francek, a safety on defense, recovered a fumble on Loyola’s 38-yard line. The Knights moved the ball to the 19-yard line, where a 4th-and-1 effort was plugged. Their next best opportunity came late in the fourth quarter when junior Toby Sharpe intercepted Francek’s pass on the Bulldogs 26.
The statistics reflected the lopsidedness of the game. Loyola ran for 250 yards and passed for 157 on only four completions out of 8 attempts.
Pity the leprechaun
Poor leprechaun. Caught in the middle between two Prep Bowl rivals.
But it didn’t last long. On one side of Ford Field — just like that! — it was all over for the Fighting Irish of Ann Arbor Fr. Gabriel Richard in the Prep Bowl.
Across the way, the Fighting Irish of Pontiac Notre Dame Prep struck three times in the game’s opening nine minutes on the way to a 38-7 victory.
Coach Brian Lemons, who had guided the Ann Arbor Irish to back-to-back Prep Bowl titles in 2009 and 2010, offered a simple post-mortem: “They got us behind the 8-ball. It was too much to overcome. We’re better than that.”
Coach Kyle Zimmerman, of the Pontiac Irish, was beyond himself: “Incredible! The kids deserved to win. This is the culmination of so many things.”
The victory bumped Notre Dame’s record to 9-0 (including a 48-22 win over Gabriel Richard early in the season) and to 13 straight regular season conquests.
Senior QB Dan Durkin was 10-of-18 passing for the game, but he did major damage from the get-go, completing six of the first seven attempts, three of them touchdown aerials: a 48-yard toss to senior back Jacob Romeo down the left sideline, then two to senior wide receiver Troy Sassack for 57 yards and 8 yards.
Notre Dame continued the barrage with a TD on the first play of the second quarter, a one-yard plunge by senior back Shane Frakes, to make it 28-0. Its last TD came on a six-play, 80-yard march straddling the third and fourth quarters, with Jermaih Johnson going the last 50 yards on a broken-field dash to the end zone.
Senior Ruairi McGreevy kicked five extra points and a 28-yard field goal to wind up Notre Dame’s attack.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Richard got no further than its own 43 through three-quarters of the game. Junior QB Joe Kendzicky connected with junior back Ashton Hundley on a 25-yard pass to reach midfield midway thru the fourth quarter. Then, senior Nick Pauze covered the remaining 50 for a TD on back-to-back runs of 11 and 39 yards.
When last seen, the leprechaun was on his way to a psychiatrist’s couch to sort all of this out.
Rematch to remember
“They came out with a purpose.”
That was Coach Tom Mach’s assessment about the mindset of his Novi Detroit Catholic Central squad charging out of the locker room for the second half of the Prep Bowl A-B championship against Orchard Lake St. Mary’s.
The “purpose” was twofold: (a) win the league championship — the final score was 21-7 — the 16th CHSL title in the last 32 years for Mach and (b) avenge a bitter 14-13 loss a week earlier to the Eaglets that cost CC the Central Division title.
Ahead 6-0, CC started the third quarter on its own 13-yard line and proceeded downfield to paydirt, methodically covering 87 yards in 12 plays. Junior back Tony Darkangelo accounted for nearly half of the march, running for 41 yards in six carries, including the last eight over right tackle.
A key play was QB Kyle Cooper, scrambling to escape intense pressure, completing a clutch 18-yard pass to tight end Matt Doneth along the right sideline at the 8-yard line to set up Darkangelo’s run. The Cooper-Doneth connection was successful again for the two-point conversion to increase CC’s lead to 14-0.
St.Mary’s put together a couple of mild scoring threats in the first half, but couldn’t finish them. CC’s defense snuffed one drive on a 4th down-and-four play at the 29-yard line.
Three plays later, the Shamrocks fumbled the ball back to St. Mary’s. The Eaglets resumed a drive from its own 44 to CC’s 15, where it stalled and, then, ended by an errant field goal attempt.
That’s when fortunes changed to CC’s side. On a 4th-and-five from its 40, Alex Kozlowski was roughed up during his punt to give CC new life on St. Mary’s 45.
“That penalty was a boon for us,” said Mach.
Cooper found Doneth for a 27-yard pass to the 18-yard line, Kozlowski ran nine yards to the three, and Cooper sneaked into the end zone with 42 seconds remaining in the first half.
On the ensuing kickoff, a surprise onside attempt, Kozlowski’s kick bounced off an Eaglets defender and Kozlowski covered the ball on OLSM’s 48 to give CC a chance to add to its lead. Kozlowski’s 41-yard field goal try failed.
There were just three seconds left in the half for the Eaglets – the only time they were on offense during a period of 11 minutes and 45 seconds spanning the second and third quarters, during which time CC had the ball for 31 plays.
“They wore us down,” said St. Mary’s Coach George Porritt. “The defense was out there too long”
Rejuvenated when the defense held CC on 4th down-and-inches on OL’s 45, the Eaglets went 55 yards to make it 14-7, but it wasn’t easy. On 4th-and-8, quarterback Dan Clements completed a 21-yard aerial to wide receiver Jalen Watts-Jackson to move the ball to the nine.
Clements was sacked back to the17, from where he found Watts-Jackson again, who made a leaping catch in the right corner of the end zone
St. Mary’s last-ditch hope for a comeback started in the shadow of their own goal posts when Kozlowski’s 55-yard punt forced the Eaglets back to their own 4-yard line. Their hope was short-lived, however, dashed by a fumble at the 31, recovered by sophomore lineman Dylan Roney. The Shamrocks needed just four plays before Cooper and Doneth combined for a 17-yard pass play to put the game on ice.
