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Sacred Heart Prep taking advantage of its football chances

by David Kiefer / Contributor
The SHP Football team defeated top-seeded Homestead 51-28 to claim the CCS Division IV Championship.

The team rallying cry may not be on the level of “Win one for the Gipper!”
But for Sacred Heart Prep, “We’ve just got to get to .500!” will do just fine for now. It helped the Gators to a Central Coast Section title on Friday.
With its 51-28 victory over Homestead in the Division IV championship game at Sequoia High, Sacred Heart Prep (6-7) extends its season toward a possible .500 finish. Reaching an 8-7 record would mean a win next week in a Northern California Regional Bowl, with a state title game at stake.
Luis Mendoza ran for 126 yards on 17 carries and scored two touchdowns, and the Gator defense forced three turnovers that led to touchdowns and stopped Homestead on fourth down in the red zone as the Gators won their first CCS football title since 2015.
If SHP hosts a NorCal regional, a Friday game would be played at Sequoia High. If on Saturday, the Gators will play on its Atherton campus. The California Interscholastic Federation will determine matchups, classifications, and sites on Sunday.
Regardless, an SHP team that went 3-7 in the regular season has won a CCS title. Coach Mark Grieb has heard talk about whether a 3-7 is deserving of the playoffs and doesn’t disagree.
“Then change the system,” he said. “There are parts of me that feel the same way too. If I was designing a playoff system, it probably wouldn’t be the way it is. But that’s the system we’ve got. Like it or not, we had a chance.”
And the Gators took full advantage, averaging 44 points for its three CCS playoff contests. However, in this one, nothing was ensured until back-to-back SHP takeaways in the fourth quarter after Homestead (7-6) cut the deficit to 37-28.
With 5:11 left, SHP defenders swarmed Homestead’s Evan Blandini (13 carries, 103 yards) and stacked him up as defensive tackle Aseli Fangupo ripped the ball away and stiff-armed his way 16 yards to the Homestead 19. Shortly after, Mendoza scored on a 20-yard run.
After the kickoff, Homestead was stymied on the next play, a 41-yard interception return for a touchdown by linebacker Luke De Grosz with 3:29 left for the final margin.
Sacred Heart Prep rushed for 259 yards and gained 386 altogether. Homestead rushed for 285 and gained a total of 382. As those numbers might indicate, the game appeared to be one of back-and-forth scores and that was the case with six lead changes in the first half.
SHP was unable to stop Homestead’s Wing-T attack. The Mustangs’ Blandini and Derek Sheerer found gaps along the line on sweeps and slashed upfield. Meanwhile, Nadim Zarour changed it up with fullback dives up the middle.
“We had a plan,” Grieb said. “But the plan looks different in a game than it does in practice. They throw a lot of things at you. They’re tough to defend.”
SHP took the lead for good on a 3-yard touch pass from Jack Herrell to Zach Freire with eight seconds left in the first half. Homestead had just taken a 20-16 lead with 1:17 left, but SHP found its footing with a seven-play 65-yard drive in the two-minute drill with Herrell connecting on all four of his passes, including a 33-yarder to Jake York.
“That was the critical moment of the game,” Grieb said. “They had so much momentum. And then for us to essentially go right down the field and score … you couldn’t have written it any better than that.”
The Gators continued that momentum at the outset of the second half by forcing Homestead to punt, and with York returning it 46 yards to the 11-yard line. Mendoza’s 2-yard scoring run on the second play of the series put SHP ahead 29-20.
“The energy of the defense feeds off the energy of the offense,” Herrell said. “The reliance we have on each other and the belief that we have in each other is so strong. And we were able to keep it going because the defense knows we’re going to do our job and we know they’ll do theirs.”
This Gator team hardly looks like the version that struggled to move the ball during a 1-4 start. And a big part of that has been the play of the versatile Freire, the flyback in the SHP offense who can run and throw as well as catch. He had a 46-yard throw to Luke Maxwell on a reverse option pass that the Gators earlier unleashed for a long scoring throw to Carter Shaw against Burlingame.
On a 2-yard run off right tackle (a play after his 25-yard run), Freire injured his leg. After a delay, he was removed from the field and kept under a jacket and blanket on an athletic trainer’s table behind the bench.
An ambulance, with lights flashing, drove on to the track as Sacred Heart Prep extended its lead in the fourth quarter. As the final seconds ticked away, York sprinted to the Freire to offer a handshake and best wishes. A couple of teammates followed.
Without delay as the game ended, Freire was loaded into the ambulance, which drove off the track and beat traffic to the exit. For a team already without Shaw, a cornerback and standout return man who was out with an injury, SHP could be without two of its top players in the NorCal game.
The injury muted the celebration a touch, but this was, after all, a struggling team that took home a CCS championship trophy for the sixth time in school football history.
“I think of this team and their resilience,” said Grieb, who won his first CCS title as a head coach. “It’s hard to lose seven games in the regular season and still have confidence and come out and play really well, especially when games get tough. Tonight, Homestead … they were tough.
“It’s remarkable and says a lot about their character that they were able to bounce back from all that, and still continue to compete and still believe in themselves and believe in each other.”

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Sacred Heart Schools Atherton

Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton

150 Valparaiso Ave
Atherton, CA 94027
650 322 1866
Founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart, SHS is a Catholic, independent, co-ed day school for students in preschool through grade 12