SAN MATEO, CA – The trademark of this year’s St. Francis team has been a dominant, vise-like defense coupled with an offense that has scored enough points against every opponent except in its lone loss to De La Salle.
This past Saturday afternoon the visiting Lancers impressive defense was in fine form, and the running and passing game was nearly as imposing in a 42-7 victory over Serra that gives St. Francis its first outright West Catholic Athletic League championship since 2003.
Not only was it the Lancers first solo league title in 15 years but it broke a string of four straight losses to their WCAL rival. It was reportedly also the largest WCAL home loss ever for Serra with the previous one in 1992 when St. Francis won 41-7 in San Mateo.
“I’ve been part of those four losses so we knew coming in we had to execute what we’ve been working on all week and trust each other because we knew they could score at any time,” said Stanford-bound Joshua Pakola.
Pakola, a 6-4, 255-pound linebacker that also plays defensive end and has running back speed, led a defense that only gave up 84 yards of total offense until both teams emptied their benches in the fourth quarter.
"It feels great to win an outright title," St. Francis Coach Greg Calcagno remarked. "We think this league is pretty special and pretty darn tough. Serra did it (an outright title) last year for the first time in a while, and for us it’s been a long time coming, and it was nice."
Lancers quarterback Ryan Daly had his best game of the season. The 6-4, 195-pound junior, who has been starting since senior Jack Perry went down with an injury, was 9 of 13 for 215 yards and four touchdowns, three of which went to Evan Williams who had TD receptions on all of his catches of seven, 63 and 70 yards.
After being used sparingly in the first half, with most of the carries going to Opeti Fangupo (18 carries, 35 yards, one TD), running back Andre Bishop came alive in the third quarter and finished with 64 yards rushing and one touchdown.
St. Francis (9-1, 7-0 WCAL) deferred the opening kickoff, and after the teams traded punts, the Lancers took advantage of a fumble recovery by Maurice Wilmer to score a touchdown that would give them a 7-0 lead they would never relinquish. The scoring drive, which culminated in a 1-yard plunge by Fangupo, was only 35 yards but it took 11 plays against a Serra defense that hit hard all day despite the margin of defeat.
With 4:48 left in the second quarter the Lancers took advantage of a fumbled punt recovered by Christopher Senteno to extend their lead to 14-0 when Daly found Williams for the first of their three touchdowns.
Serra (6-4, 5-2) closed to 14-7 on an 18-yard pass from Luke Bottari to Malakai Rango with 1:26 left in the half, but St. Francis took advantage of personal foul and pass interference penalties to go 70-yards and score with 34.7 seconds left on a 10-yard pass from Daly to Michael Leahy to make it 21-7 at halftime.
Coming out for the second half Serra Coach Patrick Walsh shouted to reporters "we're going to throw everything we have at them," but it wasn't nearly enough in a game that went to a running clock on the Bishop TD run.
"We come into every game with a mindset of wanting to get a shutout," Pakola said. "We gave up seven points and didn’t get the shutout, but our defense got some turnovers and stops, and our offense took advantage of it and came through today. A big shout-out to them."
Calcagno was hesitant to look too far in the future that could include a re-match with Serra in the playoffs.
"It was a first step for us and we have a lot of football left to play," Calcagno said. "But we're going to enjoy tonight and then worry about our next opponent."
St. Francis will be the top seed in the Central Coast Section Open 2 Division when the seedings are announced on Sunday.
