‘Our team never gave up’
Saint Paul overcomes three-touchdown deficit to win Niagara Bowl over Myer Maurauders
Nobody was in any rush to get out of the cold, out of the snow, out of the sleet, out of the freezing rain.
Out of the way from whatever monkey wrench was thrown from the tool box of weird, wintry weather.
Thursday night’s 2018 Niagara Bowl — a frozen fingernail-biter if there ever was one — went down to the wire before the underdog Saint Paul Patriots squeaked past the A.N. Myer Marauders with a 24-21 victory.
That finish was a far cry from a start that featured Myer jumping out to 21-0 lead and appearing well on its way to a ninth convincing win in as many starts.
Indeed, the Marauders scored on their first two drives as Jeremiah Nyambiya rushed for a 21-yard touchdown and strongarmed quarterback Ryan James connected with Dallas Bone on a pass-and-run play covering 45 yards.
While Myer was changing the numbers of the scoreboard in rapid-fire fashion, Saint Paul was barely moving the chains. Threeand-outs on their first two drives were followed by — ouch! — Christian Kuriata intercepting a pass from Patriots pivot Devin Schiller-Cleveland and returning it 22 yards for a touchdown.
At that point, even Saint Paul head coach Rick Oreskovich was thinking his team was in trouble.
“I’m thinking, gee, are we going to be able to come back,” a relieved Oreskovich recalled with a laugh after the game.
He never gave up hope, though. The veteran coach has seen too much from this year’s squad to ever count them out.
“The whole year our team never gave up,” he said. “We were in situations where we didn’t think we could pull it out, but we just persevered, we just kept plugging away and things started to work for us.
“They got confidence and momentum, that means a lot.”
Saint Paul went on to score 24 unanswered points on Schiller Cleveland’ s one-yard quarterback keeper, Carlo Calderon Bar ah ora’ s five-yard rush into the end zone, Schiller-Cleve-
land’s scoring strike to William Schmahl that covered 85 yards and, finally, Nicholas Abbruscato’s 12-yard field goal.
Oreskovich couldn’t say enough about what his team did with a berth in the Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association (SOSSA) championship on the line.
“Twenty-one-nothing against one of the top offences in the province!” he said. “This is one heck of a football team that we beat today, things just went our way.
“They defenced us very well, but we made some big plays.”
Seeds for Saint Paul’s championship season were sown following a loss to the Denis Morris Reds that dropped the Patriots to 0-2 to open the season.
“There was a big discussion,” Oreskovich said, recalling the aftermath of that loss as a turning point to the season. “We had kids in the dressing room screaming at each other.
“We sort of knew that’s what we had to do to get these guys turned around.
“They bought in and we took it game by game.”
Ample experience in overcoming adversity and first-hand knowledge the Patriots are a strong second-half team are what kept Schiller-Cleveland from being overwhelmed by the threetouchdown deficit.
“Our team has been down all season, so we really just kind of rallied on that.”
With the SOSSA final set to take place 3 p.m. Tuesday at Mitchelson Park gave the Patriots added incentive when they took the field against Myer.
“It was going to be at our field anyway, and we really didn’t want to have anybody else playing on our field,” Schiller-Cleveland said.
“We like it too much.”
Myer finished the regular season undefeated in the Niagara Region High School Athletic Association with a 6-0 record. Convincing victories over the Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs,
58-0; and Westlane Spartans, 42-22; qualified the Marauders for the crossover final.
After starting league play with two losses, the Patriots won their final four games to place second in their division. They opened the playoffs with a 15-11 defeat of the Blessed Trinity.
Saint Paul came into Thursday’s game under the lights at Kiwanis Field in St. Catharines hoping to knock a regular-season championship from the undefeated ranks for the second time in as many weeks. Last week in Welland the Patriots upset the Notre Dame Fighting Irish — 6-0, league play; 1-0, playoffs — scoring a 21-7 victory in the mud for the Niagara Catholic Athletic Association championship.
A Notre Dame victory would have set the stage for a rematch of last season’s Niagara Bowl, in which the Fighting Irish ended Myer’s 29-game winning streak with a 20-13 victory.
Saint Paul plays Hamilton Westmount for the SOSSA title. The winner advances to the Golden Horseshoe Bowl that this year will be played in Ottawa.
Fighting Irish 22, Marauders 6
In the Niagara junior title game, also at Kiwanis Field, Jacob Tessier passed for two touchdowns and ran for one leading Notre Dame past Myer.
Adrian D’Yves and Dayshawn Johnson caught scoring strikes of 45 and eight yards, respectively, and Tessier scrambled for a 55-yard score with one minute remaining in regulation to make it a two-possession game.
Eugene Park made it into the end zone for Myer with a 30-yard run.
Notre Dame advances to play Brantford North Park in a 2 p.m. kickoff Tuesday in Brantford in a Metro Bowl quarter-final.
Bernd.Franke@niagaradailies.com
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