PACIFICA, CA -- Long after vanquished Terra Nova left the field, Ben Burr-Kirven stood in the middle of the Tigers' turf like Alexander the Great, relishing the moment.
Burr-Kirven, seeing his first action of the season after last spring's Achilles tendon injury, helped lift Sacred Heart Prep to a 49-28 victory, and now he was savoring it. Finally the sword stuck in SHP's side the past five years had been extricated.
"What's he doing out there?" an SHP onlooker said.
"He's just soaking it in," Gators' offensive line coach Matt Moran said of Burr-Kirven, the University of Washington commit. "He's not coming back here unless we play here in the playoffs."
Terra Nova had been the Gators' Waterloo, beating the Gators five consecutive years under iconic-but-departed coach Bill Gray, now living in South Dakota. The Gators, with a loaded team this year, smelled blood on Friday night and took a big chomp.
"We've done so much with this program -- we beat Menlo (in the section finals two years ago) and we went to state, but the one thing that people could hold over us every year is that we couldn't beat Terra Nova" Burr-Kirven said. "People would say 'You're good, but you can't beat Terra Nova.' This team has always been kind of a (dark) cloud over our head."
Dark cloud gone, daylight straight ahead. Burr-Kirven exploded for 143 yards and two touchdowns in the final nine minutes to turn a 35-28 game into a run-away. A minor injury and some cramping to Gator backs prompted SHP coach Pete Lavorato to insert his recovering star at fullback when it mattered most.
"The plan was not to use Ben on offense," Moran said. "But we had to get him in there and he showed what he can do. Pretty amazing. He's an amazing kid."
The game appeared over with 3:02 left in the third quarter when SHP's J.R. Hardy bolted to the end zone from 26 yards. The Gators (6-0 overall, 1-0 PAL-Bay) led 35-7. But Terra Nova has senior quarterback Anthony Gordon, the laser-throwing kid with no scholarship, but an unerring right arm. He took TN (2-4, 1-1) to the end zone three times in a total of nine plays over the next 4 1/2 minutes, with TD passes of 29, 25 and 15 yards to Jordan Genato. Genato finished with 188 yards on 10 catches with three scores before an injury ended his fun.
"Great player," SHP coach Pete Lavorato said of Gordon, who completed 27 of 38 for 330 yards and four touchdowns. " Un-freakin'-believable. We had great coverage. There were very few passes where there wasn't somebody within a foot of the receiver. It was crazy. "
Stop the insanity, Burr-Kirven said. Warming up with mere runs of seven and nine yards, he broke loose for a 47-yard run with eight minutes left that gave the Gators' some breathing room at 42-28.
"I just didn't want to get caught from behind," he said. "I hadn't done that in a long time. It was kind of like 'Well, let's see if we can get in the end zone here and not get dragged down.' ... The next time it was like 'All right, I can still do this. I can still play this sport.'"
No kidding. Did we mention he also had two sacks on defense?
After that first Burr-Kirven TD run, Gordon responded with completions of 14 and 32 yards to Genato. But Genato on the latter hit the turf hard and stayed there for 30 minutes. He left in an ambulance with a possible dislocated hip.
Missing his favorite target, Gordon was intercepted for the second time by SHP's Mitch Martella. Then on the Gators' next play from scrimmage, Burr-Kirven burst through a hole on the right side and sprinted to the end zone to finish the scoring -- and TN's dominance over the Gators.
"They were taking away certain things and they were giving us certain things," Lavorato said. "Plus, (Burr-Kirven's) a pretty powerful guy. He's not 100 percent, but he's a (heck) of a football player. He is going to be a great college football player and he's the best high school player I've ever been around."
As stellar as Burr-Kirven and Gordon were, the game was won by the unsung, including the Gator offensive line of Thomas Rogers, Wyatt Welch, Mark Bechtel, Kyle Stalder and Justin Harmon, along with tight end Andrew Daschbach. They bored holes in a young TN line allowing a party of five or six Gators passage.
The Gators' sledgehammer attack (525 yards rushing and 620 overall) had Terra Nova first-year coach Tim Adams shaking his head.
"I saw a a very good football team over there that just physically dominated us," he said. "They controlled the line of scrimmage and were very, very good. We couldn't stop the run."
The Gators knew it from the start. They opened the game by throwing nary a pass in zipping 66 yards on nine plays to score on sophomore Lapitu Mahoni's 5-yard run. Mahoni rushed for 80 yards on 12 carries before leaving in the fourth quarter with a balky ankle.
On SHP's next possession, Hardy ran 56 yards to set up QB Mason Randall's 29-yard TD run for 14-0. Hardy celebrated by taking a visit Saturday with his father to Texas Christian University.
TN kept misfiring and following a three-and-out, the Gators went 79 yards on 10 plays with Hardy (16 carries, 178 yards, two TDs) scoring from the 12 to make it 20-0 with 8:38 left in the half.
Finally TN awakened from its slumber with a 13-play drive, capped by Gordon's 10-yard scoring pass to Eric Viana. It was 20-7 at the half.The Tigers gave it a determined effort in the final 24 minutes, but it went for naught.
The Gators were elated to tame TN, even if Lavorato didn't let on.
"I don't focus on that," he said. "They're a good football team and it's always good to beat a good football team. We couldn't beat them before because they were better than us, and this year we're better than them."
