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SERRA: READY FOR RIORDAN REMATCH
Serra’s loss to Archbishop Riordan in the West Catholic Athletic League season finale still stings.
But with a rematch looming in the Central Coast Section Open Division championship game on Friday night at San Jose City College, the Padres said the setback has sharpened their sense of urgency for their postseason run.
“The loss definitely made us hungrier,” senior running back Iziah Singleton said after Serra defeated Archbishop Mitty on Saturday in the first round of the playoffs. “We lost at home on our senior night, so it definitely made us work harder and want it even more.”
Riordan edged Serra 42-35 on Nov. 7 in a back-and-forth game that saw neither side gain much separation. The score stayed tight into the fourth quarter with Serra needing to recover an onside kick to have one last chance to tie.
But the Crusaders recovered and took home their first WCAL title in 25 years.
While confident that his team can pull through, Serra coach Patrick Walsh knows the challenges of facing an opponent twice in the same year, especially two weeks apart.
“It’s going to be a difficult week and they’re obviously a spectacular team,” Walsh said. “They’ve been No. 1 all year long and they’re still No. 1. We have to prove that we have the moxie and then the toughness to beat a team like that, and it’s going to be very difficult. … We emptied the cupboard, and we’re gonna have to kind of mix in some new ingredients and figure out a way to have some more points than Reardon. But that’s gonna be our task.”
The Padres won four CCS Open titles from 2019 to 2023. Riordan will be looking for its first CCS title since 2007 and first in the section’s highest division.
The winner on Friday will advance to a NorCal regional. The loser will play Palma or Los Gatos for the CCS’s Division I title in Week 3 of the playoffs, with the winner moving on to a regional.
– Nathan Canilao
DE LA SALLE VS. PITTSBURG: BY THE NUMBERS
Every season, it’s noted more than a few times that De La Salle’s last loss to a North Coast Section opponent was in 1991, to Pittsburg in a North Coast Section championship game.
The teams have met 34 times since then, including 12 in an NCS final.
DLS has won them all, with only three being decided by one score.
The good news for Pittsburg heading into the teams’ NCS Open Division championship game on Friday night at Diablo Valley College?
The Pirates have come close the past two times, losing 10-7 in the Open final last season and 30-23 in the Open final in 2022.
Now the bad news:
De La Salle is playing on an entirely different level this year, looking a lot like the program’s teams that captured seven state championships from 2007-2015.
The Spartans are 11-0. Their past five games have ended with running clocks. Their shutout of San Ramon Valley in the first round of the playoffs Friday was their third of the season. (They also held Serra and St. Francis scoreless).
They have more than doubled their opponents in yardage, 4,353 to 2,111, and last week held SRV to three yards rushing.
On the flip side, Pittsburg is 10-1. The Pirates have a win over Los Gatos and captured their league title again. Their loss was to Riordan, 42-35 in Week 3.
In other words, they’re very good.
But they’ll be a heavy underdog against this De La Salle team, which is aiming to end the program’s 10-year drought without a state championship.
There is a consolation for Pittsburg, as there has been since the NCS adopted its current playoff format: The loser Friday will play for the section’s Division I title against Acalanes or Cardinal Newman the following week, with the winner advancing to NorCals.
Pittsburg has won four D-I titles in a row.
— Darren Sabedra
PITTSBURG: FRESHMAN OK AFTER SCARY INJURY
Pittsburg freshman Nico Pavlin is recovering well after taking a scary hit in the first quarter of the Pirates’ 42-18 win over Liberty on Friday in an NCS first-round game.
“He’s doing well,” Pittsburg coach Charlie Ramirez told the Bay Area News Group in a text. “He was in the locker room last night and this morning. Mostly precautionary.”
Pavlin was carted off the field and put in an ambulance, causing a several minute delay.
– Nathan Canilao
LOS GATOS: LINEMAN EXPANDS ON BROTHERHOOD
Garrett Bertsch spoke of the importance of brotherhood after playing defense for the first time all season to help Los Gatos beat St. Francis 14-7 with one final goal-line stand.
Turns out, the relationships that form that connection go back over a decade.
“We’ve known each other since Day One,” Bertsch said. “And we’re all buddies, and I think that’s what we have on (St. Francis). Private school, they all went to separate middle schools, but we’ve known each other since like kindergarten, first grade. And that connection really helped us win.”
He’s happy they’ll now get another week together. Los Gatos will play host to Palma in the CCS Open/Division I semifinals on Friday.
“It’s everything,” Bertsch said. “This is my favorite group of people, and I’m so happy to play another week with them.”
– Christian Babcock
MITTY: COACH CHERISHES 2025 SQUAD
An emotional Danny Sullivan couldn’t hold back tears after his team fell to Serra in the first round of the CCS Open/Division I playoffs on Saturday.
Struggling to find the words to describe his group, Sullivan harkened back to when he first brought the players together 11 months ago.
“John Faylor, who’s a Mitty grad on our staff, he’s back for the first year, and he was like, ‘This is a weird group of kids. They’re just weird.’ But it fits them. They have their own identity,” Sullivan said with a smile. “I think it’s so much fun to be a part of this group and coach them. So I’m tremendously honored to have that title and to get to do it.”
Sullivan shared an emotional moment with star running back Lazaro Faraj-Washington following Saturday’s loss. In his final high school game, Faraj-Washington left the game in the second quarter and didn’t return, having to watch his team’s season end on the sideline.
Sullivan had nothing but kind words to describe the senior.
“He’s always been the one that will get there in the morning, and he’s always on the field working,” Sullivan said. “I’ve never had a player really like him. So just for everything he’s done for us and for the school – he’s probably the most special kid I’ve coached in all honesty, and that’s why this is really hard.”
– Nathan Canilao
ST. FRANCIS: KEANAAINA DYNASTY STILL REIGNS
When Kingston Keanaaina graduated from St. Francis after the last school year, he left a significant void in the Lancers’ backfield.
So they filled it with three of his younger brothers – Kaimani, Motu and Kawika.
All three took carries for the Lancers’ in their loss to Los Gatos on Friday.
Kaimani, a senior who also played in the defensive backfield, will follow Kingston and leave the Lancers next year to serve his Latter-Day Saints mission. But St. Francis coach Greg Calcagno will still have multiple Keanaainas he can count on next season.
“Very good job security, hopefully, with all those guys,” Calcagno quipped. “And they’re all great kids, which is even more important.”
– Christian Babcock
SAN MATEO: FITZGERALD BROTHERS LEAD WAY
The three Fitzgerald brothers have made a huge impact on the San Mateo football team the last three years.
Last Friday, Lukas Fitzgerald (6-1, 200), a junior quarterback, rushed for 113 yards as the No. 8 seed Bearcats upset top-ranked and previously undefeated Woodside 20-13 in overtime in the CCS Division III quarterfinals. He’s rushed for 1,384 yards on 203 carries and scored 16 touchdowns on the season.
Yianni Fitzgerald (6-1, 210), a senior who coach Jeff Scheller says is the strongest of the three in terms of pure power, is a middle linebacker and part-time fullback who does all the kicking for the team. He scored on a 27-yard run against Woodside and has 412 yards rushing on 53 carries with seven TDs on the season.
They’re following their older brother Emmanuel (6-1, 225), who rushed for 2,574 yards and 20 touchdowns over the previous two seasons. He is now at UC Santa Barbara throwing the shot put and discus for the track and field team.
“These guys are athletic, big, strong and unselfish and they understand their roles,” Scheller said. “Having them elevates the program.”
In the San Mateo triple option the quarterback gets hit on virtually every play, running the ball or faking the run. Lukas only passed three times against Woodside but had 22 of the team’s 51 rushing attempts. He’s thrown 31 passes in 11 games this season.
“Our ideal would be no passes and no punts in a game,” Scheller said. “Lukas is still learning. His physical attributes are built for this. In a traditional offense he’d be a running back.”
The three brothers get some of their size and athleticism from their father, Aaron, a Terra Nova grad who played basketball and tennis at Canada College.
— Glenn Reeves