Knights claim junior football crown

The St. Mary's Knights combined a quick start and a stifling defense to repeat as high school football junior division champions.

A touchdown 5:17 into the game is all the Knights would need offensively to defeat the Korah Colts 14-6 on Saturday afternoon at Rocky DiPietro Field to claim the Oldtimers Sportsmen's Club Trophy as city champions.

Both teams entered the game as co-league champions with identical 4-0-1 records. In the regular season, the teams played to a 7-7 tie.

St. Mary's and Korah both featured aggressive and quick defenses that didn't allow either team to establish their running game throughout.

"After that 7-7 tie in the regular season, we knew we were in for a defensive battle," said Knights head coach Al Lucio, who took the reigns this season from veteran Larry Marsh.

"They are a very well coached team and we worked hard in practise all week on gap control and containing the off tackle run which is Korah's bread and butter play. We knew they couldn't sweep on us because of our speed so we concentrated on the off tackle."

The Colts were able to contain St. Mary's speedy backfield combo of Michael Esson, the league most valuable player, and Dane Brason while the Knights kept Korah running backs Ben Ginter, Kyle Leonard and Wes Greco in check.

The Knights came out throwing on offense and setup Esson for a seven yard touchdown. Jeff Pellegrino added the convert to give the Knights a 7-0 lead.

With little happening on the run attack, the Knights went to the air again in the second quarter as quarterback Marc Hurtubuise connected with receiver Michael Martens for a 66 yard touchdown and a 14-0 lead.

"We tried to mix up our offense because Korah brings a swarm defense meaning they bring everyone including the kitchen sink up the middle right at you," added Lucio. "We were hoping we could catch them off guard and have one of our receivers open for a touchdown. That worked well for us today.

"Esson was factor for us today not only because of his speed and power but because we knew they would be keying on him. Because of that, we didn't use him as much and tried to diversify our attack."

Korah came out of the locker room with better effort and held the Knights to two first downs in the second half.

Ginter pulled the Colts back into the game with a 14 yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter but Korah couldn't crack the St. Mary's defense the rest of the way.

"(St. Mary's) made a couple of big plays in the first half that decided the game and we just weren't able to recover," said Colts head coach Paul Caldbick.

"The long pass to Martens was a big play. You just afford to make mistakes against a good team. Physically, they dominated the game on both sides of the ball but in the second half we played better."

Martens hauled in three passes for 115 yards to lead the Knights offense. Hurtubuise completed three of 10 passes for 99 yards while Esson threw an option pass for 26 yards. Esson led the Knights rushing attack with 58 yards on 14 carries while Brason added 31 yards on nine carries.

Defensively, Jordan Verdone led the Knights with 7.5 tackles and half a sack while Sheldon St. Louis made 5.5 tackles and half a sack. Pellegrino recorded six tackles, Steve Piazza 5.5 and Joe Griffa five.

Ginter led the Colts rushing attack with 48 yards on 15 carries. Greco added 20 yards and Leonard 15.

Luke Critchley paced the Colts defense with 10.5 tackles and Jeff McAllister added five, Chris Cassagrande four and Leonard three tackles and a sack. Josh Buchan recovered a fumble and Daniel Ferris returned an interception 19 yards.

The game marked the end of the season as a Northern Ontario Secondary Schools Association (NOSSA) championship is not held in the junior division.