Central Catholic rallies around injured star, stuns St. Mary’s in Holy Bowl

They are revered as state champions, recognized by the rings that adorn their fingers, the patches on their jackets and the trophies that crowd their shelves.

But inside the huddle, between the hash marks, the Central Catholic football team is defined by its struggles and how it responds to such adversity.

“We don’t give up,” quarterback Hunter Petlansky said as a Holy Bowl celebration threatened to sweep him up following a 36-22 victory over St. Mary’s. “When we’re down, we bounce back.”

In big ways, too.

Last season, an ankle injury to running back Montell Bland elevated Justin Rice on the depth chart. In turn, the then-unheralded junior lifted the Raiders to their third straight CIF State Division IV title with a firestorm of touchdowns and 200-yard games.

On Friday evening, in a game the Raiders put on the same level as a state bowl, Central Catholic rallied around another injured running back.

This time, it was Rice who was carried off the field by coaches early in the third quarter. He winced in pain as he sat on the trainer’s table, the sting in his left ankle compounded by a deficit on the scoreboard.

The Raiders wouldn’t struggle for long, rattling off 19 unanswered points to stun St. Mary’s behind enemy lines in yet another epic Holy Bowl.

“This feels so good,” linebacker/fullback Kekupa’a Freehauf said. “I had a couple of guys over there talking smack to me, telling me (the Holy Bowl trophy) wasn’t coming home this year. Well, guess what? We brought the Holy Bowl trophy home this year. I’m so happy to be a part of this community and to be a Central Catholic Raider.”

Central Catholic shut out the Rams’ prolific passing attack in the second half and went all-hands-on-deck to complete the come-from-behind victory.

Quarterback Hunter Petlansky stood near the 20-yard line, game ball tucked under his arm, emotion collecting in his eyes. In his return to his former school, Petlansky engineered two fourth-quarter scoring drives and then sealed the victory with a gutsy fourth-down conversion from his own 10-yard line.

Petlansky scored on a 16-yard bootleg – a play Noah Righetti scored on last season to give St. Mary’s a last-minute win – and then hit Noah Porter-Jones in stride for a 76-yard touchdown with 2:51 remaining.Petlansky later convinced coach Roger Canepa to let him sneak it on fourth-and-inches at the 10, a play that allowed the Raiders to run out the clock in victory formation.

“We have big players, and our coaches trust us to make big plays in those moments,” said Petlansky, who has verbally committed to play at Columbia.

Petlansky struggled in coverage in the secondary and sure tackling at the line of scrimmage. He had one yard on six carries at the half, typifying his team’s struggles.

The Raiders rocketed to a 17-8 lead thanks largely to their special-teams stars. Kicker Bryce Wade connected on a 22-yard field goal, and return specialist Daron Bland answered a St. Mary’s score with a 95-yard kickoff return with 3:48 left in the first quarter.

The Rams would tilt the field in their favor, though, leaning on a second-string quarterback with motivation of his own.

Tommy Alegre (12 of 19, 225 yards) was thrust into the starting lineup this week when starter Jake Dunniway suffered a head injury in a 35-34 victory at Cardinal Newman last week.

Like Petlansky in reverse, Alegre attended Central Catholic as a freshman. The Blue Crew even tried to heckle their former classmate by chanting his name, but to no avail.

Alegre picked apart the Raiders’ secondary in the first half, completing 10 of 16 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns.

He found Dewey Cotton in the flat and let the speedy slot receiver do the rest. Cotton slipped a tackle along the sideline and then froze another defender with a stutter-step, which left him an open lane to the end zone.

St. Mary’s surged into the lead with a 14-0 spurt in the second quarter. Keaton Hampton avoided a big hit over the middle to complete a 60-yard hookup with Alegre, and tailback Brandon Zaunbrecher rumbled 46 yards on a draw to make it 22-17 at the half.

Central Catholic had no answer, offensively, even with a healthy Justin Rice in the backfield.

The Raiders gained just 38 yards of offense on their final 20 plays of the first half. They went into the half searching for answers.

Leave it to a well driller to find life in the depths of despair.

Freehauf and Porter-Jones said Canepa delivered an impassioned speech at the break. He stripped down the offense, implored the defense to hold its ground a little longer and punctuated every point with a stern reminder: Execute.

“We just started running the football and hit a couple of big play-action passes, but we went back to what we can do,” said Canepa, wet and sticky from a Gatorade bath. “We lined up and said, ‘Let’s see if we can push them around a little bit,’ and we did, thank God.”

The Raiders needed their entire fleet of running backs to get by St. Mary’s, a Division II program ranked 16th in MaxPreps’ Northern California poll.

Jared Rice scored Central Catholic’s first touchdown on a 33-yard reverse. He finished with a team-high 65 yards on 10 carries, most coming in the second half with the other Rice on the sideline.

Bland started the second-half rally with a 19-yard touchdown. The junior disappeared into the pile at the line of scrimmage, bounced the run out wide and finished through a gap to make it 23-22 with 11 seconds left in the third.

The commitment to the run opened up the play-action for Petlansky, who completed his final two throws.

Porter-Jones had only one thought as he ran underneath a perfectly weighted ball from Petlansky: “Don’t get caught.”

“Coach gave us a good speech at the half. He told us this game wasn’t over. We were lazy and cruising in the second quarter, and they got up on us. We had to open our eyes. We realized we were playing for something.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 2:07 AM with the headline "Central Catholic rallies around injured star, stuns St. Mary’s in Holy Bowl."