A friendly rivalry with a title at stake
Soon after the Tubbs Fire roared through Santa Rosa on Oct. 9, destroying half of Cardinal Newman’s campus, Marin Catholic High in Kentfield raised nearly $25,000 for its counterpart’s recovery. Each of the school’s 750 students also wrote a note of encouragement.
“We’re pulling for them outside of three hours on Saturday,” Marin Catholic President Tim Navone said.
That three-hour window begins at 7 p.m., when two schools with abundant parallels — North Bay, private, traditional football powers — meet for the North Coast Section Division 3 championship at Rancho Cotate High in Rohnert Park. The winner advances to next week’s Northern California regional playoffs.
This will be the third Cardinal Newman-Marin Catholic postseason clash in the past six years. It will unfold in the context of a tragic, extraordinary season for Newman — about 100 students, faculty, staff and coaches also lost their homes in the fire, including five varsity football players.
Two of those five, Nikko Kitchen and Kyle Carinalli, caught second-half touchdown passes in last week’s stirring,
29-28 semifinal victory over Rancho Cotate. Another player displaced by the fire, quarterback Beau Barrington, threw both passes.
“There’s been a lot of stuff this year, for sure,” Cardinals head coach Paul Cronin said. “It took about three weeks to get back to normal, and now you’re just kind of going through the new normal.”
Cardinal Newman students are taking classes at four parishes in the area, separated by grade level. Principal Graham Rutherford hopes to reopen the campus for the start of spring semester in January, with 22 portable classrooms.
School officials also have been scrambling to find practice locations for their football team. The Cardinals, 10-2 and the No. 2 seed, worked out at El Molino High in Forestville on Thursday, their fourth practice venue.
But none of that will matter come Saturday night. That’s when Cardinal Newman’s journey will revolve around football again, with a chance to earn a second consecutive NCS title. The Cardinals rolled to last year’s Division 4 championship. They will confront a familiar, formidable opponent in top-seeded Marin Catholic (11-0). The Wildcats, who have held a preseason scrimmage with Cardinal Newman the past several years, reached the NCS finals for the seventh consecutive season.
Two years ago, in the Division 4 title game, Marin Catholic rolled to a 38-21 victory over Cardinal Newman. In the 2012 Division 3 semifinals, future Cal and NFL quarterback Jared Goff led Marin Catholic to a wild, 42-37 win over future Browns/Cardinals linebacker Scooby Wright and Cardinal Newman.
So, yes, these schools have some history.
Marin Catholic head coach Mazi Moayed has a top-flight quarterback this year in 6foot-5 senior Spencer Petras. But the Wildcats are trying to overcome season-ending leg injuries to running backs Nathan Gernhard and Colby Jacques the past two weeks.
Anthony Marino, a 5-9 senior who spent some time at the position last year, will become the primary running back Saturday night, with Cole Truex also in the mix.
Moayed realizes Cardinal Newman counts as the sentimental favorite, given everything it has endured the past two months.
“Athletics is one of the things keeping them going,” Moayed said. “It’s a really heartfelt story, and one everyone is sympathetic for.”
Not surprisingly, Newman players view this season through an uncommon lens. They’ve talked about playing with more urgency than ever the past three weeks, fervently wanting to extend their season.
They also know they will remember more than wins and losses when they look back on 2017.
“If we can win a championship, it will be nice icing on the cake,” running back Tanner Mendoza said. “But either way, what we all went through together and the way we came together, and the love surrounding this team, it’s going to be irreplaceable in my eyes.”