CHS falls victim
St. Raphael picks up first win, tops Cumberland
The Saint Ray’s High School football team put one in the win column, 14-6, at Cumberland’s expense.
PAWTUCKET — St. Raphael football coach Mike Sassi had seen this movie before and he wasn’t looking forward to the ending.
Not for the first time this season, the young Saints entered the fourth quarter of a Division I contest in position to earn a victory. But, in September games against East Providence and Cranston East, St. Raphael simply didn’t finish what it started to enter Saturday’s Blackstone Valley clash with playoff-hopeful Cumberland winless.
Behind touchdowns from Pride Clark and freshman running back Andre Gray, the Saints started the fourth quarter with a 14-point advantage. Cumberland’s Joe Leonard scored a touchdown to get his team back in the contest, but this time St.
Raphael made a few big plays down the stretch – including an Andrew Ardella interception to ice the game – in a 14-6 victory at Pariseau Field.
“I’m very proud of these kids,” St. Raphael coach Mike Sassi said. “The tough thing is our record doesn’t really show the effort we’ve put in every week. We’ve lost a game in overtime [to East Providence] and we’ve lost a game with 13 seconds left [to Cranston East]. We’re not that far away, but we have a young group.
“The big thing at the end was showing we could close because that’s something we haven’t been able to do. That comes with experience and I guess we’re doing that after six games.”
St. Raphael (1-6, 1-5 Division I) can’t make the playoffs, but the Saints severely dented the Clippers’ hope of hosting a Division I quarterfinal in two weeks at Tucker Field. Cumberland (3-4, 3-3 Division I) knows it will be in the playoffs with a win over Cranston East Friday night, and the Clippers could still host a playoff game if a couple of results go their way.
The Saints finish the regular season Saturday afternoon at Central, and they will play a consolation game against one of the two teams from Division I-B that doesn’t make the playoffs. Currently, South Kingstown and Barrington are on the outside looking in.
“I’m really proud of the team because we stayed together and we’re a family,” Gray said. “All that hard week we put in during the week translated into this game. We actually turned up. We were loud the whole game and that’s what helped us.”
The Saints forced a fumble on Cumberland’s opening possession and immediately scored all the points they would need to earn their first victory. Ardella caught a 20-yard pass to get the ball into Clipper territory, which allowed Clark, Gray and Devin O’Malley to go on a 13-play, 65-yard drive that culminated in a Clark’s oneyard touchdown run. O’Malley ran in the two-point conversion to make it 8-0.
The Clippers ran just 13 offensive plays and picked up three first downs in the first half, had to weather another sustained SRA drive late in the half. The Saints went on a 14-play drive that ended on the Clipper 3.
“The kids really did a great job executing the game plan,” Sassi said. “Whenever Cumberland made a new adjustment, I made a new adjustment defensively and the kids picked it up. They did a great job. We did a few things differently before the game. We were quiet and focused before the game. I was worried we were going to be flat, but the kids were just focused.”
The Saints went up two touchdowns early in the thrid quarter after O’Malley caught a 41-yard pass to bring the ball down to the 2-yard line. After two run plays netted a loss of one yard, Gray found space on the right side for a three-yard touchdown run to put SRA up 14-0.
“We stayed vigilant, we stayed focused and we were hyped,” Gray said. “We forced turnovers and took care of the ball. That’s basically it.”
Cumberland junior receiver Dante Aviles-Santos, who caught five passes for 100 yards, helped his team get back into the game with a 55-yard catch late in the thrid quarter. Two plays into the fourth quarter, Leonard scored on a one-yard quarterback sneak. The Clippers missed the extra point.
Cumberland advanced all the way to the St. Raphael 34 with under a minute b left in the contest, but Ardella picked off Leonard to secure the victory.