XAVIER  0  -  CHAMINADE  28

Urgent Memo To: Xavier Nation
Subject: Saturday's Football Finales

Greetings, You Princes of 16th Street
and All Our Fellow Citizens of Xavier Nation...

All three Xavier football teams wind up their regular seasons this Saturday, and all three are facing formidable opponents. This is a direct and urgent appeal to all of you to please make every effort to support the 16th Street Kids and their coaches by coming out to at least one of these games. 

Xavier Varsity vs. Chaminade at Aviator Field (7:00 PM)

It's been a tough season for The Team Formerly Known as the Kaydets... and then the Bruins... (Est. 1882), and things are about to get a whole lot tougher. After losses to all four traditional New York Catholic High School Football League AAA Division schools they've faced so far this season, as well as one of the three AA Division teams they had to beat to secure a decent seeding going into next weekend's CHSFL AA Division playoffs, the Knights (3-5, 2-5 CHSFL) face powerful Chaminade at Aviator Field on Saturday night.

The defending AAA Division champion Flyers (7-1, 6-1) were undefeated before losing to perennial CHSFL powerhouse St. Anthony's 38-10 last Friday night, and they will be looking to make a statement by finishing the regular season with a big win over Xavier. The injury-decimated 16th Street Kids, meanwhile, are limping toward the finish line, fingers crossed that at least some of their key players who now populate the injured list will be able to make it back in time to defend Xavier's AA Division crown in the post-season.

To most people who follow the CHSFL, including local sports reporters and pundits, the question is not whether Chaminade will defeat Xavier, but by how many points. The Flyers occupy 4th place in the league standings this week— Xavier is in 15th place— but those standings are meaningless because they lump all 22 teams and their wildly disparate schedules together.

A better, albeit imperfect, metric of each team's strength relative to the rest of the league is contained in the CHSFL's inscrutable (to me, anyway) "power point" rankings that are used to determine playoff seedings. Coming into this final weekend of the regular season, those rankings have Chaminade seeded #2 of the eight teams now slated for the upcoming AAA Division playoffs, and Xavier seeded #6 of the eight schools that will play in the AA Division tournament.

Xavier and Chaminade have played only two opponents in common this fall. The Flyers defeated AAA Division #3 seed Iona Prep 22-7 and #7 seed Stepinac 21-14. Xavier fell to the Gaels 38-14 at the end of September and were walloped by the Crusaders 41-3 on the first weekend of league play. 

And now Long Island's only remaining Catholic boys' school, with its 1,700-strong student body and excellent athletic facilities— including the $25 million Activities and Athletic Center (AAC) that includes an indoor track suspended over the 1,500-seat "main arena", a brand-new football stadium and upgraded practice fields (all on campus, of course)— is headed for Aviator Field this Saturday night. The 16th Street Kids— who must fight for practice space on softball fields, soccer pitches and sometimes vacant lots in two different boroughs— would have their hands full even if everyone was healthy, which, trust me, they are not.

"Geez, O'Hara," I hear you saying, "this sounds like it's going to be the Little Big Horn revisited. Why would I want to come all the way out to the shores of Jamaica Bay— to the very doorstep of the Irish Riviera on a dark November night— to witness that?"

Well, I like to think of this game more in terms of the Spartans at Thermopylae, but I hear you. I'll be at Aviator first and foremost because I'm Irish. There's nothing we Irish like more than a good fight. And the more hopeless the odds, the better we like it. It's in the DNA, I guess.

I'll also be there because I know that this team is better than its record might indicate. I haven't been able to make as many games this year as I usually do, but I've been to enough to know that these kids are as tough and resilient as any who have worn the Maroon and Blue in Xavier Football's 131 years.

I watched Coach Chris Stevens' gridironmen roll onto the St, John the Baptist campus in West Islip, Long Island after dropping three straight games to top-tier AAA Division opposition. It would have been understandable— sort of— if they had decided to mail the rest of the season in and start thinking about rugby. Instead, they rallied around each other and their coaches and pounded the home team into the Cougar Field carpet.

Two weeks later, I saw the 16th Street Kids execute one of the great comebacks in the history of our tribe when they battled back from a 13-point deficit with just four minutes left in the game to defeat #2 AA Division seed Cardinal Hayes. That game was in the Bronx at SUNY Maritime, one Xavier's two "home fields" this season that until recently was the Bronx-based Cardinals' home field as well. The Hayes crowd at that game was at least as big and boisterous as Xavier's.

So does The Team Formerly Known as the Kaydets... and then the Bruins... (Est. 1882) have any shot at all against the Flyers of Chaminade? The experts would say not a chance in hell, and that may be so, but I would reply that Xavier Football has seen its share of miracles over its 131 years— we're coming up on the anniversary of the legendary 1966 squad's impossible victory over never-defeated Farrell, after all— and some of those miracles have happened right there at Aviator Field.

Certainly, Xavier is capable of beating an AAA Division team. In what, to me, was the most disappointing game this season, the Knights led AAA Division #4 seed St. Francis Prep for the entire game before losing by a single point, 29-28, with less than two minutes to go. 

This weekend's game is meaningless with respect to the post-season. No matter what happens at Aviator Field on Saturday night, the Flyers will still be the defending champions and a top seed in the AAA Division playoffs, and the 16th Street Kids will still be headed to the AA Division tournament where, #6 seed notwithstanding, I truly believe that Xavier can win the title for a second straight year.

On paper, Saturday's game should be a victory for the visitors— an easy win. But football isn't played on paper. If the city kids catch the Long Islanders looking past them to the playoffs... if Chaminade has not properly prepared for an antique offense that this edition of the Flyers have never seen before and which exists nowhere else in the CHSFL... if the man who brought us The Amazing, Fantastic Gridiron Wayback Machine pulls another rabbit or two out of his hat... if Xavier Nation decides to come out in force on Saturday night, pack the stands at Aviator, and, as Father Lonergan directs his parishioners in the film The Quiet Man, cheers like Protestants... and above all, if the 16th Street Kids play like there's no tomorrow, like it's the last game of their lives; if they go [redacted] to the wall on every single play until the whistle blows... well then, who knows?

Remember: this time a year ago, it was Superstorm Sandy who came to call, bringing hurricane winds and fire and what seemed like the whole damn Atlantic Ocean with it. Chaminade? Please. The pressure is on the Flyers, not Xavier. Chaminade is expected to win. And the 16th Street Kids have nothing to lose. It comes down to this: which team is willing to lay it all on the line when there's nothing to play for but pride?

I will be at Aviator on Saturday night to find out. I hope youse mugs (and mugettes!) will join me— especially you guys who are part of what the Demon Dentist of the Jersey Shore, John Murray '67, likes to call The Long Maroon and Blue Line. No one knows better than we ancient gridironmen what it takes to play football for Xavier: the daily grind of long commutes, practices on distant fields (or vacant lots), late nights studying because no quarter is asked or given when it comes to academics, all our "home" games in other boroughs. More than anyone else in Xavier Nation, we should be at Aviator to have our descendants' backs.

Aviator Field is located at Brooklyn's historic Floyd Bennett Field on Flatbush Avenue, just off the Belt Parkway and across the Gil Hodges/Marine Parkway Bridge from the merry yet mysterious Irish Riviera. (That's the Rockaways and Breezy Point for you tourists.)Parking at Aviator is ample, free and secure. There are also food vendors and a sports bar on site. Directions from any corner of the galaxy to Aviator Field can be found at http://www.aviatorsports.com/content/directions-0

Stand by...
Tom O'Hara '69

Xavier Falls to Chaminade

The Team Formerly Known as the Kaydets... and then the Bruins... (Est. 1882) have compiled an impressive record at Aviator Field since it became their home field of choice several years ago, but Xavier is 0-2 there so far in 2013 after being shut out 28-0 by defending AAA Division Chaminade High School in the regular season finale on Saturday night.

The 16th Street Kids have been hampered all season by injuries to key personnel, many of them two-way starters, and on Saturday night 11 of the 22 starting positions on offense and defense were filled by players who were not atop the depth chart on Opening Day. As has often been noted here over the years, no one is tougher or more courageous than the 16th Street Kids— especially when their backs are to the wall— and Saturday night was no exception, but there were just too many holes to fill against a team as deep and talented as the Flyers. 

The player whose absence was felt the most was senior Trey Solomon. Xavier's Mr. All-Everything went down with an injury early in the loss to St. Peter's High School the week before and he was kept out of the lineup against Chaminade as a precaution heading into the playoffs. 

The Knights did not just lose a starter in Trey, they lost one of the New York metropolitan area's best running backs and one of its finest defensive backs as well. Trey is the first Xavier gridironman in many years to be courted by Division I football programs, and all you need to know here is that college coaches disagree on where Mr. Solomon would prove most valuable. Some see him as a running back on their teams, while others project him as a safety.

Trey is also a key hurler in Xavier's quarterbackless single wing. And a productive receiver when his backfield partner John Strehle's steps up to throw. Trey also returns punts. And kicks. All of these players were absent from the Xavier lineup on Saturday night with Mr. Solomon on the sidelines.

Despite what the score might seem to indicate, I can assure you that the injury-riddled 16th Street Kids did not go quietly into that good night. They gave it their all but, in the end, the Knights were worn down by Chaminade's size and numbers and undone by a mixture of mishaps, miscues and penalties that, unfortunately, has too often been the formula for defeat this autumn.

The Knights trailed Chaminade by a score of just 14-0 at intermission, with one of those touchdowns coming after a Flyer scooped up a Xavier fumble and returned it 40 yards to pay dirt. Another turnover by the home team— this one a bobbled kickoff deep in Xavier territory— set up one of Chaminade's two second-half touchdowns.

The Xavier offense ran 48 plays to Chaminade's 34 on Saturday night, but the Flyers were more efficient and effective, rushing for 250 yards and two touchdowns on 27 carries and completing five of seven passes for 71 yards and a third TD.

The Knights, meanwhile, ran the ball 40 times for 194 yards— an average of nearly five yards a carry— against a large and punishing Chaminade defense that was stacked against the run. Leading the assault with 89 yards on 18 carries was senior Robert Irimescu, who was playing out of position in his first backfield start. Xavier's designated throwers completed but one of seven passes for just seven yards.

Without the always dangerous Mr. Solomon back deep for the Knights, Xavier's special teams returned two punts for a total of two yards, and three kicks for another 14 yards. Fortunately, the kicking game was much more effective. The versatile Mr. Irimescu and third-generation Xavier gridironman James Tweedy each punted twice for a respectable 133 total yards, and Mr. Tweedy placed Xavier's sole kickoff of the evening 55 yards downfield.

I would like to say that my clarion call for Xavier Nation to rally around the 16th Street Kids resulted in a packed Aviator Field on Saturday night, but I would be lying. That said, I'd like to thank all the Sons of Xavier, alumni parents and faculty and staff who did make the effort, including James Tweedy's uncles, Ed '70 and Pat '78, Jim Callery '71, and the Demon Dentist of the Jersey Shore himself, John "Doc" Murray '67, member of the legendary 1966 Xavier Kaydets.

Liam O'Hara '04, who was in attendance, tells me that veteran New York City lawman Brian Donohue '83 had the field under surveillance, and I was also accosted on the sidelines by the pride of the FDNY, the one and only Vinny O'Grady '85. I was not in the stands and so I'm sure I missed some of you guys, but thank you as well.

Special mention also goes out to Xavier's peripatetic president, Jack Raslowsky, who was also on the sidelines at Aviator Saturday night even though he had to be up before dawn on Sunday to run in his second New York City Marathon.

Jack has only recently returned from hiking over the Pyrenees and across Spain on El Camino de Santiago and he was worried that the Marathon, while grueling, might seem a tad mundane by comparison. I assured him that Sunday's race would be anything but boring because I had arranged to have the incomparable Mr. O'Grady and a handpicked squad of Xavier Alumni Ninjas station themselves at various points along the route, from where they would pursue and attempt to tackle Jack on sight.

Stand by...
Tom O'Hara '69