SHP Shakes Up CCS: Two-Win Gators Not Sorry for Playoff Invite, Proves it Belongs with Win Over Carmel
Gators Face Reigning DV Champion Half Moon Bay at 7 p.m. Friday
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Selections for the CCS football brackets, however, are a different animal. Because there are only 10 games to the regular season — compared to 30 for a basketball or baseball team — a system of automatic bids and power-point accumulation determine which teams make the CCS football playoffs.
Very rarely do you find a football team with a losing record make the playoffs, and you certainly had never seen a two-win squad receive a berth.
Until this year. Sacred Heart Prep, which went just 2-8 during the regular season, had a trying 2016, coach Pete Lavorato said.
“It’s been a tough year, I can’t lie. When you juxtapose the last six years and this year, it was hard on the ego,” Lavorato said. “You start to doubt yourself. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m getting too old.”
Coming into the 2016 season, the Gators had won four straight CCS titles in various divisions and six of the last eight. They had a pair of state championship bowl-game appearances and churned out a number of Division I-caliber college players over the last six years.
But then came 2016 and just two wins.
“Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong this year,” Lavorato said. “I don’t believe in karma, but maybe all those years past when everything went our way, when things went well — it was payback.”
Playoff eligible
And despite winning just two games, the Gators qualified for playoffs. Lavorato said he heard plenty of chirping about whether his team deserved to be in the playoffs. But their inclusion in the postseason goes back to qualifying for CCS: in the Peninsula Athletic League Bay’s Division, the top four finishers earn automatic bids. SHP won only two games, but both those wins came in Bay Division play and it put them in fourth place in what was a down year for most of the Bay Division.
“I let it go in one ear and out the other. Hey, what are we supposed to do? The top four teams (in the Bay Division) go to the playoffs,” Lavorato said.
The Gators proved the CCS selection committee right by going on the road last Saturday and knocking off top-seed and undefeated Carmel 46-26 in a CCS Division V first-round game.
“(Beating Carmel) was a relief. I know they’re a “B” team, but they’re pretty good,” Lavorato said.
And that karma Lavorato was talking about earlier? Maybe the football gods still were looking out for the Gators after all because all the teams that qualify from the Bay Division play in the three Open divisions CCS offers.
That is unless another team opts up, as happened with Aptos this season. Aptos plays in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League, a “B” league, but the Mariners are essentially an “A”-level team. So CCS left a loophole in the playoff qualification process that if a team like Aptos, an “A”-level team playing in a “B’ league, decides it wants to play for a state championship, it could opt up to one of the Open divisions — if it is one of 24 teams with the most power points.
With Aptos having enough power points, the Mariners opted to play in the Open Division III — meaning an “A”-league team with the least amount of power points would be slotted into its division of enrollment.
So instead of playing in the Open Division III bracket, SHP was moved to Division V, where the Gators will now face reigning DV champion Half Moon Bay at 7 p.m. Friday on the coast.
Not that beating a 10-0 Carmel team was a piece of cake.
“[We] played well on both sides of the ball. This was, by far, our best game of the year,” Lavorato said. “As I watched [film of the game], I couldn’t believe the effort these (SHP) kids had on both sides of the ball. It was really cool to see them play so hard and so smart. That’s why we’ve won in the past.”
Change does Gators good
It’s no coincidence that SHP has been playing some its best football near the end of the season. The Gators started the year losing its first five games, but have won three of their last six and things started to turn around once they got some injured pieces back and then decided to make a change at quarterback.
“I don’t like to use injuries as excuses, but we don’t have a lot of kids and we were hit in certain areas. It was tough,” Lavorato said. “We knew we weren’t terrible. We were OK. It was just a matter of getting some pieces back.”
One of those pieces was running back Isoa Moimoi who, after missing the first four games, has rushed for an average of 109 yards per game over the last seven.
The other big move was putting junior Brad Yaffe under center and moving opening-day starter Thomas Wine to the strong safety position he started and played the entire 2015 season.
“Here’s the deal: when we made the transition, it wasn’t just about bringing in Yaffe. … We needed to get more athletes on the field,” Lavorato said.
Yaffe, who started the season at defensive end and was the backup signal caller, had minor knee surgery a few weeks before the season started. And while he was healthy enough to play on defense, the SHP coaching staff decided he wasn’t quite ready to move to quarterback.
But since the move, starting with the game against Hillsdale, Yaffe — and the Gators — have gotten better. Against Carmel, Yaffe threw for 159 yards on 9-of-12 passing with two touchdowns and no interceptions.
“[Yaffe has] done a great job. I’m just really … proud of him. His improvement, every game, has just gotten better and better,” Lavorato said.
Lavorato had equally high praise for Wine as well. After all, it’s not easy losing the starting quarterback role, but Lavorato said the senior handled it with aplomb.
“What was cool was, Thomas Wine, his attitude, was awesome. He said, ‘Whatever you want me to do to help the team.’ His attitude could not have been better. He’s a beautiful guy,” Lavorato said.
A successful season
That was one thing Lavorato noticed about this year’s team — the attitude. He said he never saw the players get down on themselves or each other. He said they came out every day and worked as hard as they could in practice, while still maintaining a jovial environment.
“It’s always hard not to look at wins and losses as being the barometer of success,” Lavorato said. “But I think it’s been a success with our kids’ attitude going through a lot of adversity. (Our recent history is) a tough act to follow. These kids didn’t want to be the team that … sucks.
“Their attitude has just been fantastic.”
Now that are the Gators not only in the playoffs, they are a win over Half Moon Bay away from appearing in a seventh straight CCS final and if we’re counting, here’s a number that should have the remaining teams in the Division V bracket feeling a bit apprehensive.
“In the last five years, including this year, and if you don’t include the two state championship games (both losses), we’re 15-0 (in the playoffs),” Lavorato said. “We won only two (regular-season) games, but they were the right two games. I believe we deserved to be in the playoffs and I think we proved we belonged.”
Back
It’s not unusual to see basketball or baseball and softball teams make the Central Coast Section playoffs with losing records. In those sports, teams need to finish with a .500-or-better record either overall or in league play to qualify for the postseason.
Selections for the CCS football brackets, however, are a different animal. Because there are only 10 games to the regular season — compared to 30 for a basketball or baseball team — a system of automatic bids and power-point accumulation determine which teams make the CCS football playoffs.
Very rarely do you find a football team with a losing record make the playoffs, and you certainly had never seen a two-win squad receive a berth.
Until this year. Sacred Heart Prep, which went just 2-8 during the regular season, had a trying 2016, coach Pete Lavorato said.
“It’s been a tough year, I can’t lie. When you juxtapose the last six years and this year, it was hard on the ego,” Lavorato said. “You start to doubt yourself. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m getting too old.”
Coming into the 2016 season, the Gators had won four straight CCS titles in various divisions and six of the last eight. They had a pair of state championship bowl-game appearances and churned out a number of Division I-caliber college players over the last six years.
But then came 2016 and just two wins.
“Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong this year,” Lavorato said. “I don’t believe in karma, but maybe all those years past when everything went our way, when things went well — it was payback.”
Playoff eligible
And despite winning just two games, the Gators qualified for playoffs. Lavorato said he heard plenty of chirping about whether his team deserved to be in the playoffs. But their inclusion in the postseason goes back to qualifying for CCS: in the Peninsula Athletic League Bay’s Division, the top four finishers earn automatic bids. SHP won only two games, but both those wins came in Bay Division play and it put them in fourth place in what was a down year for most of the Bay Division.
“I let it go in one ear and out the other. Hey, what are we supposed to do? The top four teams (in the Bay Division) go to the playoffs,” Lavorato said.
The Gators proved the CCS selection committee right by going on the road last Saturday and knocking off top-seed and undefeated Carmel 46-26 in a CCS Division V first-round game.
“(Beating Carmel) was a relief. I know they’re a “B” team, but they’re pretty good,” Lavorato said.
And that karma Lavorato was talking about earlier? Maybe the football gods still were looking out for the Gators after all because all the teams that qualify from the Bay Division play in the three Open divisions CCS offers.
That is unless another team opts up, as happened with Aptos this season. Aptos plays in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League, a “B” league, but the Mariners are essentially an “A”-level team. So CCS left a loophole in the playoff qualification process that if a team like Aptos, an “A”-level team playing in a “B’ league, decides it wants to play for a state championship, it could opt up to one of the Open divisions — if it is one of 24 teams with the most power points.
With Aptos having enough power points, the Mariners opted to play in the Open Division III — meaning an “A”-league team with the least amount of power points would be slotted into its division of enrollment.
So instead of playing in the Open Division III bracket, SHP was moved to Division V, where the Gators will now face reigning DV champion Half Moon Bay at 7 p.m. Friday on the coast.
Not that beating a 10-0 Carmel team was a piece of cake.
“[We] played well on both sides of the ball. This was, by far, our best game of the year,” Lavorato said. “As I watched [film of the game], I couldn’t believe the effort these (SHP) kids had on both sides of the ball. It was really cool to see them play so hard and so smart. That’s why we’ve won in the past.”
Change does Gators good
It’s no coincidence that SHP has been playing some its best football near the end of the season. The Gators started the year losing its first five games, but have won three of their last six and things started to turn around once they got some injured pieces back and then decided to make a change at quarterback.
“I don’t like to use injuries as excuses, but we don’t have a lot of kids and we were hit in certain areas. It was tough,” Lavorato said. “We knew we weren’t terrible. We were OK. It was just a matter of getting some pieces back.”
One of those pieces was running back Isoa Moimoi who, after missing the first four games, has rushed for an average of 109 yards per game over the last seven.
The other big move was putting junior Brad Yaffe under center and moving opening-day starter Thomas Wine to the strong safety position he started and played the entire 2015 season.
“Here’s the deal: when we made the transition, it wasn’t just about bringing in Yaffe. … We needed to get more athletes on the field,” Lavorato said.
Yaffe, who started the season at defensive end and was the backup signal caller, had minor knee surgery a few weeks before the season started. And while he was healthy enough to play on defense, the SHP coaching staff decided he wasn’t quite ready to move to quarterback.
But since the move, starting with the game against Hillsdale, Yaffe — and the Gators — have gotten better. Against Carmel, Yaffe threw for 159 yards on 9-of-12 passing with two touchdowns and no interceptions.
“[Yaffe has] done a great job. I’m just really … proud of him. His improvement, every game, has just gotten better and better,” Lavorato said.
Lavorato had equally high praise for Wine as well. After all, it’s not easy losing the starting quarterback role, but Lavorato said the senior handled it with aplomb.
“What was cool was, Thomas Wine, his attitude, was awesome. He said, ‘Whatever you want me to do to help the team.’ His attitude could not have been better. He’s a beautiful guy,” Lavorato said.
A successful season
That was one thing Lavorato noticed about this year’s team — the attitude. He said he never saw the players get down on themselves or each other. He said they came out every day and worked as hard as they could in practice, while still maintaining a jovial environment.
“It’s always hard not to look at wins and losses as being the barometer of success,” Lavorato said. “But I think it’s been a success with our kids’ attitude going through a lot of adversity. (Our recent history is) a tough act to follow. These kids didn’t want to be the team that … sucks.
“Their attitude has just been fantastic.”
Now that are the Gators not only in the playoffs, they are a win over Half Moon Bay away from appearing in a seventh straight CCS final and if we’re counting, here’s a number that should have the remaining teams in the Division V bracket feeling a bit apprehensive.
“In the last five years, including this year, and if you don’t include the two state championship games (both losses), we’re 15-0 (in the playoffs),” Lavorato said. “We won only two (regular-season) games, but they were the right two games. I believe we deserved to be in the playoffs and I think we proved we belonged.”
Sacred Heart Schools Atherton
Founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart, SHS is a Catholic, independent, co-ed day school for students in preschool through grade 12
