Baptist beats Xavier, 49-44, in 'A' title game rematch
With Stevens Prophete hanging on, Seamus Kelly stretches across
the
goal line for one of four touchdowns Sunday. Photo by Damion Reid
Xavier senior cornerback Steven Hongach comes up with a fourth-quarter interception. Photo by Damion Reid
And Xavier liked its chances with the ball on the St. John the Baptist 36-yard line with 12 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.
“I felt like we had some magic left,” Seamus Kelly said.
Kelly was the one playing David Copperfield for the Knights, rushing for 200-plus yards for a fourth-straight game and scoring four touchdowns and everyone in the overflow crowd at St. John the Baptist knew the ball was going to the senior from Breezy Point.
But Kelly couldn’t come up with one more miracle. Matt Safko's lob down the left sideline intended for the running back was intercepted by Ryan Collins at the 5-yard line with five seconds left and the Cougars held on for a thrilling, 49-44 homecoming victory Sunday afternoon.
St. John the Baptist earned a measure of revenge for a 45-33 loss in the CHSFL ‘A’ championship game last season. The Cougars also beat Xavier, 41-34, in the regular season a year ago in a pair of shootouts.
“Same game, different score,” Xavier coach Chris Stevens said.
The game was an interesting match-up between two of the top running backs in the CHSFL. On one side was Kelly, the 5-foot-11, 190-pound workhorse who has drawn interest from a number of Ivy League schools as well as the College of the Holy Cross.
And on the other was Thomas Beverly, a 6-foot-3, 205-pound senior who is the leading rusher on Long Island and has a number of Division I-AA schools courting him.
Kelly put up better numbers, rushing for 230 yards, scoring four touchdowns (one receiving) and three two-point conversions, but Beverly (18 carries for 160 yards, three touchdowns) scored what proved to be the game-winning touchdown, breaking a tackle en route to a 20-yard burst into the end zone to give the Cougars a 49-44 lead with 41 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kelly said of his statistics. “We didn’t win.”
While neither team could make a big stop, Xavier (3-1 CHSFL ‘AA-A’) was done in by several missed tackles during the game. On another touchdown, Beverly broke a tackle at the 35-yard line en route to a 50-yard score.
“It’s a tough loss,” said junior back John Wilson, who rushed for touchdowns of 76 and 79 yards. “I thought we had them stopped at 44-42, but then we missed a tackle – a lot of missed tackles today – and then a touchdown.”
In a game desperate for a big defensive play, Xavier came up with the first – an interception by Steve Hongach at midfield. But the Knights gave the ball right back when Kelly, stumbling along the sideline on a 22-yard gain, lost control of the ball behind his back. James Kierans recovered for St. John the Baptist, but Xavier appeared to have an argument that Kelly was already on the ground when he coughed the ball up.
“I thought I was down,” Kelly said. “I’m going to say I was down. It was a tough call.”
Three plays later, Matthew Pryzby (14-for-22, 223 yards, three touchdowns, one interception) hit Giovanni Torres for a 54-yard strike down the left sideline and St. John the Baptist (3-2, 3-1) led 42-38 with 8:36 left. Kelly came right back and atoned for the fumble, scoring on a 9-yard run before being stopped on the two-point conversion to put Xavier in front, 44-42, with 3:47 left.
Defensive end Michael Dedza hit Beverly for a four-yard loss and then Przby threw an incomplete pass on second down. It appeared Xavier had finally got the stop it desperately needed when Przby’s attempted pass to Peter Sutton was broken up by Patrick Green on third down.
But the senior cornerback was flagged for a controversial pass interference call, giving the Cougars a fresh set of downs. Eight plays later, on 3rd-and-10 from the Xavier 20-yard line, Beverly scored the decisive touchdown.
“It looked like a good play, a real good play, but whatever,” Stevens said. “They’re a passing team so if that’s not a penalty they come out and get a 20-yarder on the next play. You can say what you want. We’re not going to blame it on the officials when you give up 49 points.”
Almost exactly a year ago, St. John the Baptist handed Xavier its lone loss of the regular season and the same is true through five weeks of the CHSFL season. Will the Knights bounce back and beat the Cougars in the championship game again? Maybe, but there’s another formidable opponent waiting in Week 6.
“It’s a really tough loss,” Kelly said. “I can’t even explain how much it hurts, but we’ve got Hayes next week and we have to come back strong.”
dbutler@fiveborosports.com
Seamus Kelly
Birthdate: 1991-05-30Hometown: Breezy Point , NY
Team: Xavier High School
Height: 5' 11"
Running Back
Five Boros Sports
Athlete of the week for October, 7th 2008
Seamus Kelly didn’t want to hear the numbers. He
didn’t care. The only numbers that mattered to the senior on the
Xavier football team were those on the scoreboard, reading that St.
John the Baptist outlasted the Knights, 49-44, in a rematch of last
year’s CHSFL ‘A’ title game won by Xavier.
“It doesn’t matter,” the running back from Breezy Point said.
“We didn’t win.”
That’s not the answer you’d expect to hear from a high-school kid
who just rushed for 234 yards and scored four more touchdowns to
increase his season total to 811 yards and 15 rushing touchdowns in
four games.
But Seamus Kelly is old school, in terms of his attitude, his
blue-collar mentality on the field and the offense Xavier coach Chris
Stevens runs.
It is the single wing, which Stevens installed in 2006 and dates back
to Glenn “Pop” Warner in 1895 – about as long as they’ve been
playing football at Xavier. It helped “Coach Stevens’ Amazing
Fantastic Gridiron Way Back Machine,” so called because of the
throwback offensive scheme, to finish 2007 with a 10-1 record,
including a Thanksgiving Day victory against rival Fordham Prep.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Kelly said. “I wouldn’t want to play in
anything else. This is the best offensive I’ve had and I’ve been
playing for 11 years.”
“Famous Seamus,” as he is known by his teammates, made his varsity
debut as a sophomore, rushing for 89 yards and a touchdown on nine
attempts against the Rams. Last year, Kelly ran for 1,169 yards and 18
touchdowns.
Two weeks ago, Kelly rushed for six touchdowns in a 47-20 win against
Bishop Ford.
“He’s a workhorse,” junior John Wilson said of Kelly. “Six
touchdowns last week, that’s unheard of. … When it comes to Seamus,
it’s going to be a pretty big play.”
Even though Baptist knew the ball was going to Kelly, they couldn’t
stop the powerful 5-foot-11, 190-pound back who is being courted by
Ivy League schools as well as the College of the Holy Cross.
Not even a bloody forearm would keep Kelly from the game. When the
official told Kelly he had to leave because of the blood, Stevens
burned a timeout, Kelly got his arm taped up and rushed for a 9-yard
touchdown on the next play.
That toughness comes, in part, from playing for Xavier’s rugby team
in the spring. Kelly, along with linebacker Mike Jusczak, were
selected to the United States Under-17 national team and Kelly helped
lead the United States to a 2-1 record in cup competition against
England, Portugal and Romania.
Good afternoon, Gentlemen.
My name is Tom O'Hara, and although I live here on Long Island (Malverne), where I thoroughly enjoy Newsday's great coverage of high school football (especially yours), I am writing you on behalf of my alma mater, Xavier High School of New York City.
As you know, Xavier plays St. John the Baptist at St. John's this Sunday afternoon at 1:30 PM in what Newsday's 2008 Long Island High School Football Preview picked as one of three "Games to Watch" in the CHSFL this season. I hope that Newsday covers what will be a great game— it always is when these two teams meet— and that one of you is the guy that writes the story. If that doesn't happen, I would appreciate it if you would pass this e-mail on to your editor or whomever Newsday sends to the game in your stead.
With all due respect to St. Anthony's and Floyd (Great piece in Wednesday's edition, Gregg.) and all the other great high school football dynasties on Long Island, around the tri-state area and across the country, I believe that Xavier High School is one of the most unusual and interesting stories in high school football today.
Xavier (www.xavierhs.org), a Jesuit high school for young men founded in 1847, has fielded a football team for 125 years—since 1883. That by itself is a notable achievement. Located in Manhattan on West 16th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, Xavier has no campus in the accepted sense of the word— no game field, no practice field, not a blade of grass nor a square inch of bare earth to its name.
I smiled when I read in Newsday recently that St. Anthony's coach Rich Reichert was complaining about the Friars having to play so many games on the road to start the season. Xavier's football team— whose players come from all five boroughs and beyond— must go on the road every day just to practice. Each afternoon, 130 players from all three football teams board school buses for the trip across the East River to Red Hook, Brooklyn where they practice on a patchwork of municipal baseball and soccer fields.
If they're lucky, that is. Local Brooklyn soccer and softball leagues have preference when it comes to field permits at Red Hook, and by the time the CHSFL playoffs roll around each season, Xavier's football teams are often being pushed off those fields onto what amount to little more than weed-covered, trash-strewn vacant lots.
After practice, the kids face long commutes home through evening traffic to reheated dinners and long hours of study and homework. (Xavier's academic standards and the demands it places on its students are second to no one in the CHSFL.)
Xavier plays its games even farther away from Manhattan— at Brooklyn's Aviator Field, across Jamaica Bay from JFK International Airport and just across the Gil Hodges bridge from the Rockaways. The JV and freshman teams play some of their home games on a municipal field in Marine Park, Brooklyn.
Despite having to overcome obstacles faced by few (if any) other programs on Long Island, in the CHSFL or anywhere else, Xavier Football has flourished over the past two years. Last Saturday night's 47-20 defeat of Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School was the ninth straight victory for the Knights since a 41-34 loss to arch rival St. John the Baptist back on October 6, 2007, and it broke the 109-year-old school record of eight straight wins set way back during the 1898 and 1899 seasons.
The Knights have won 14 of their last 15 games, dating back to what many now look back on as a seminal moment— Division A Xavier's 28-14 upset victory over Division AA championship finalist Fordham Prep on Thanksgiving Day, 2006. (The Xavier-Fordham Prep Turkey Day rivalry began back in 1886.)
This season, Xavier has picked up where it left off last November. The Knights are 3-0 so far this season as they head into the tough part of their schedule.
Xavier is currently in first place in the CHSFL's recently-merged Division AA-A and also leads the division in most points scored (138) and least points allowed (58). League-wide (21 teams), the Knights rank third and fifth respectively in those categories. (See www.nychsfl.org.)
How does a football team from a Manhattan high school with no outdoor athletic facilities of its own not only manage to compete in the owerful Catholic High School Football League, but compete successfully?
Recently your fellow sports journalist Paul Zimmerman wrote this in his Sports Illustrated column on NFL power rankings:
"They ran a direct snap to Ronnie Brown, with Chad Pennington out on the wing, six times, with spectacular results. This has caused journalists with a poor knowledge of football history to hail the return of the single wing, "a formation 100 years old," according to the AP. First of all, 100 years ago the basic formation was the T. Different, of course, than the open T-formation of today, but a tight alignment with the QB right behind the center. And the single-wing? Oh my, what a beautiful thing -- that few people today have ever seen. The run-pass tailback, and the spinning fullback, and the short, evil looking blocking back, designated QB in those days, cruising behind the line, delivering those devastating trap blocks. Dear departed past. Will I ever see it again?"
Paul Zimmerman would be pleased to know that the single wing is alive and well and living in New York City, where it has been major factor in Xavier's improbable success under head coach Chris Stevens (Xavier Class of 1983) since he installed it during the 2006 season.
Following their "famous victory" over Fordham Prep to close out that campaign, Coach Stevens' Amazing Fantastic Gridiron Way Back Machine (so named in honor of Xavier's vintage antique offensive scheme) went on to a 10-1 season in 2007, defeating St. John the Baptist for the CHSFL Division A Championship and again defeating regular-season Division AA champion Fordham Prep on Thanksgiving Day, while compiling ridiculous offensive stats along the way.
A major cog in Xavier's Way Back Machine is senior running back Seamus Kelly. "Famous Seamus", as he is known to his teammates, made his varsity debut as a sophomore in the final game of the 2006 season. In that upset of Fordham Prep, a victory that many believe marked the start of Xavier Football's current run, Kelly rushed for 89 yards and a touchdown in just nine attempts.
In 2007, Famous Seamus ran for 1,169 yards and 18 touchdowns, while scoring 132 total points for the CHSFL Division A champion Knights. For his performance, Kelly was named to the All-Bronx/Manhattan Team by the New York Daily News. He was also selected for the All New York State Team by the Sports Writers of New York.
In just three games this season, Kelly has already
rushed for 577 yards and, according to MaxPreps.com, currently
leads all New York State high schools in scoring with 13 touchdowns
and 90 points overall. Second-place Brandon Murie (Iroquois High
School, Elma NY) also has 90 points, but his team has played four
games to Xavier's three. Kelly is
comfortably ahead in points per game (30) and is also ranked second in
the state in rushing yards per game with 192.3.
Last Saturday night against Bishop Ford, the 5' 11", 190 lb.
senior rushed for 236 yards and six touchdowns. Kelly
ran for two more TDs that were called back on penalties. For his
efforts, Famous Seamus was named Player of the Week by the CHSFL.
All of the foregoing is impressive, to be sure, but conventional nonetheless. That's football. What else is new (other than that eccentric single wing attack, that is)?
What few people outside 30 West 16th Street realize, however, is that Xavier Football not only has a mad scientist of a head coach, a dedicated staff and players who are as tough as they are talented, it also has a secret weapon: Xavier Rugby.
Established in 1976, Xavier's rugby team has won three national high school rugby championships— most recently in Salt Lake City in 2007— as well as numerous regional titles, including the last six Northeast U.S. high school rugby championships (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008).
In 1985, Xavier High School won the first rugby national high school championship game ever played. Its opponent was Highland of Salt Lake City— the storied rugby program portrayed in the film Forever Strong, which opened nationwide last week. Four members of that great 1985 Xavier squad now coach rugby at Xavier: head coach (and English teacher) Mike Tolkin, associate head coach (and assistant headmaster) Joe Sweeney, Tim Walsh and Bruce McLane.
Over the past three decades, the Xavier rugby team has competed all across the United States (including Hawaii) and Canada, and toured overseas to Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Bermuda, Barbados and Jamaica. The 2007 squad traveled to France, where it was undefeated, and this year's team made a return trip to Ireland, where it played one of the world's best high school rugby teams, Dublin's legendary Black Rock College.
Over the years, more than a score of Xavier rugby players have represented the United States at various levels up to and including the men's team. Mike Petri (Class of 2002) played scrum half (the rugby equivalent of quarterback) for the United States in the 2007 Rugby World Cup and in numerous other international matches over the past year.
Two members of the Xavier football team that will face St. John the Baptist this Sunday— running back Seamus Kelly and linebacker Mike Jusczak— were selected to the U.S. U-17 national rugby team last spring. A serious injury in Xavier's rugby season opener sidelined the hardnosed Jusczak, but his teammate Kelly traveled to England, where he helped lead the United States to a 2-1 record in cup competition against England, Portugal and Romania. "Famous Seamus", indeed.
Every spring, well over 90% of the football players (from all three teams) play rugby even as they participate in Coach Stevens's mandatory weight conditioning program. The kids rise before dawn to make it into West 16th Street in time to lift before the start of the academic day. Afternoons are reserved for rugby training at various fields around Manhattan and Brooklyn, or games against their distant rivals in the tri-state Metropolitan New York Rugby Football Union's high school division (http://metnyrfu.org/index.htm).
In an era where year-round conditioning and cross-training have become articles of faith at all levels of football, these kids never stop. (Watch these kids play rugby sometime, and you'll understand why they seem so comfortable in the single-wing.) Xavier players go straight from football season to rugby pre-season to rugby season to football pre-season. (And remember— Xavier's rugby season includes Xavier Football's off-season weight training program.)
Xavier may not have the biggest or fastest players in the CHSFL, but no team is tougher or more fit. Whether they're playing football or rugby, these kids never give up and they never tire. Any opponent who lets down against the Knights, even for a short while, usually lives to regret it. Saint John's is still smarting from their loss to Xavier in last November's CHSFL Division A championship game when, trailing by 13 points with just 7:20 left to play, the Knights exploded for 31 points to stun the Cougars 45-33.
For more Xavier Football information, including schedules, statistics, game photos and video clips, I invite you to visit http://departments.xavierhs.org/athletics/football/index.htm. (Click on the individual scores for each game to gain access to info, photos, etc. related to that game. For some great photos from this year's Maroon and Blue Game at football camp, click on "Camp Timberlake West".)
To access WNBC-TV's coverage of the 2007 championship game between Xavier and Saint John the Baptist, visit http://departments.xavierhs.org/athletics/football/2007results/index.htm and click on the appropriate link.
To see the Xavier Knights' 2007
Football Video Highlights, visit
http://departments.xavierhs.org/athletics/football/video/movie.htm.
Best regards,
Tom O'Hara
Xavier Class of 1969