The St. Joseph’s Jaguars defeated the St. Peter’s Panthers in Catholic School Athletics of Simcoe County (CSASC) senior football action on Friday afternoon at the Ashford Drive school.
The two teams fought a back and forth battle without gaining much yardage against each other until the final seconds of the first half when St. Joe’s won a hard fought touchdown.
A turnover in the third quarter looked promising for St. Pete’s, but they immediately gave up a turnover themselves on the first play which saw the Jaguars regain the ball.
The Jags continued to gain yardage in the third and were rewarded with another touchdown.
With the team leading 16-0 going into the final quarter, they managed to hold the surging Panthers at bay.
St. Peter’s fate was sealed, however, after they threw an interception with two minutes left on the clock, giving St. Joseph’s the win.
With the win, the Jaguars improve their record to 2-0, while the Panthers fall to 1-1 on the season so far.
"Defensively, really well played by our guys,” Erik Scott, head coach of St. Joseph’s Jaguars, tells BarrieToday in a post-game interview on the sidelines.
“Any time you pitch a shutout, you can’t be super upset, but we definitely saw a lot of things we need to clean up, and we’ve got a tough game next week against JOA (St. Joan of Arc’s), so we’ve got a lot of things to clean up if we are going to be competitive in that game," he says.
J. P. Falacho, coach of the St. Peter’s team, thought the game went pretty well as he says they had a good game plan going forward. “We were ready for their offence, and some bad things happened. At the end of the day, we made more mistakes than they did."
“Offensively we couldn't really move the ball on our run game, because they did have some phenomenal linemen, and guys who can tackle very well,” he adds.
The team had problems holding onto the ball, with a lot of fumbles, and it’s something they need to go back to the drawing board to fix, says Falacho.
“Although, I thought the kids did an excellent job all around,” he says. “We just have to take this loss and learn from it.”
“You’ve got to remember, these guys are inexperienced, they’ve never played football in their lives, lives in the first time they’ve had football in their school for many, many years,” adds Falacho.
In other senior football action, St. Thomas Aquinas lost to St Theresa's 21-0 on Wednesday, while Thursday's game saw St. Joan of Arc at Patrick Fogarty, but the score has not been posted to the league website as of time of publication.
In junior football, St. Joan of Arc was at St. Peter's on Friday, also with no score updated as of press time.
