It’s only September, but it felt like November at St. Anne’s-Belfield Thursday night.
After a sloppy first half, the Saints’ matchup with rival St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes became a playoff-style battle of survival and STAB found a way to get the job done, pulling out all the stops in a 23-17.
“When you get in these games you’re going to put it all out there,” said STAB coach John Blake. “Heck, we’re running hook-and-ladder with a kid (Dylan Park) that never ran it before.”
Blake called the hook-and-ladder late in the fourth quarter and Charlie Murray hit Andrew Crockett on a stop and in one motion he pitched the ball to Park, who streaked across the formation and then cut up the sideline to complete the 36-yard gain and set St. Anne’s (3-0) up on the 20-yardline.
After an incredible 21-yard run by quarterback Charlie Murray — he reversed field on a rollout and rumbled up field on third and 16 to get the first down — STAB was set up on the 9-yardline. Branford Rogers, who finished the night with 105 yards, bulled his way in from there for a touchdown and then toted the ball on a two-point conversion to give STAB a 6-point advantage.
Then, appropriately after the defense carried the Saints through long stretches, a defender stepped in to help finish things off with Erik Allen grabbing his second interception of the game.
“I think he just misread the receiver and it happened to come right to me,” Allen said. “I didn’t have to do much.”
STAB had to punt and stop SSSA once more after the Allen interception, but St. Stephen’s struggled to move the ball and a Brandon Spitzer hurry on fourth and 10 iced the contest.
The intensity and edge to the game was there from the beginning, but a slew of penalties and careless turnovers marred the early proceedings. The two teams combined were flagged 24 times for a total of 159 yards.
A long pass by each team on their first possession helped quickly push the score to 7-6, and from there, tempers flared. SSSA asserted some control during that time though and built a 14-9 lead at the break as STAB’s defense struggled with halting big plays.
That changed in the second half because the Saints’ defense matched and then exceeded their opponents’ intensity. A key to that was Charles Sipe’s play as all 5-foot-9, 175 pounds of the junior at defensive tackle slashed through the SSSA line repeatedly, disrupting a run game after the break that had looked promising in the first half.
“They could not block him, it was a joke,” Blake said. “Then when we put Brandon on the nose, they couldn’t do anything. Our defense just picked us up throughout.”
The win has the potential to be a turning point for STAB and a major confidence boost for a Saints roster that was battered last season by a tough schedule. St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes is a Division I school and boasts athletes like North Carolina lacrosse commitment Brent Armstrong at quarterback (STAB held him to five completions on 11 attempts) and Darius Lee, a UVa football commit who also had offers from Kansas State and Duke. Lee wasn’t a huge factor in the game at linebacker as Rogers piled up his third-straight 100-yard game and Murray ripped off three runs of 10 or more yards while totaling 53 yards on the night.
“This is a big step for us,” Blake said. “They’re pretty good. We toughed it out — that’s exactly what we did, we toughed it out.”
