It was two days
before last Sunday’s Class AAA high-school football final between East and
Penfield. East carried an 8-0 record into the game against the 4-4 Patriots of
suburbia, but one Monroe County coach didn’t think much of the Orientals.
“Who’d they play?” he
asked, suggesting that the City-Catholic league’s competition is completely
inferior to Monroe County’s.
His opinion is
understandable. The City-Catholic hadn’t produced a football champion since
1996, when East and Marshall won. The coach, however, seemed to forget that in
the season opener, East blew out Greece Olympia, last year’s Class A runner-up.
And he ignored East’s victory over Rush-Henrietta in the October 23 semifinal,
when the Orientals stormed back from a two-touchdown deficit for a
double-overtime win.
The coach felt East
coasted against substandard City-Catholic teams. But now he might want to
reconsider his thinking after the Orientals pounded Penfield at University of
Rochester’s Fauver Stadium, 48-14, for the AAA title.
The Orientals are
good, as it turns out.
East ran for 446 yards against Penfield. It passed only once — a touchdown from Larry Mitchum to
Alton McKinney. Most of the night, 190-pound tailback Anthony Rios ran behind
345-pound right tackle Brandon McDowell and 339-pound right guard Quinten
Moorehead.
In high school, one
300-pound-plus lineman is a luxury, but two, lined up side by side? That’s a
difficult battle for a high-school lineman or linebacker. Thus, Rios — who
has scored more than 20 touchdowns this year — rushed for 258 yards and three
touchdowns against Penfield.
On Sunday at 4 p.m.,
the Orientals face AA-champion Webster Thomas at Fauver for a spot in the state
tournament. Thomas upset powerhouse Webster Schroeder. Unless the Titans take a
big lead that throws East off its game, I don’t see how they’ll be able to contain
Rios, McDowell, and Moorehead.
Of course, Thomas
beat Schroeder, which runs the ball like East. But the Orientals are not
one-dimensional. The team runs because the running game has been nearly
unstoppable. Yet, when it’s time to throw — as it was when the Orientals
trailed RH by two touchdowns — East is capable. Larry Mitchum completed seven
passes for 178 yards and three touchdowns against the Royal Comets.
Last year, City-Catholic teams lost all four sectional quarterfinals they played against their suburban
counterparts. None of the league’s Class A schools even made sectionals. This
year, East and Franklin went farther than people anticipated.
Franklin was
particularly noteworthy. The team headed into the year with a 25-game losing
streak, but played well enough to finish 5-4 and earn a spot in the Class A
semifinal against Victor, which it lost.
Overall,
City-Catholic football is progressing, and that’s partly because of extensive
off-season workout programs, and because city players are now allowed to sign
out helmets and shoulder pads for summer football camps. East coach Paul
Brigandi said that in the past, the city school district narrowly interpreted a
New York State high school rule in a manner that prevented kids from borrowing
equipment to attend off-season camps requiring it.
While the suburban
and Catholic schools were attending summer team camps and preparing for the
season, the city kids were forced to wait for tryouts in mid-August. Brigandi
had complained that the city’s players were being deprived.
Not anymore. Franklin
coach Pete Haugh called the new interpretation “huge,” allowing the city teams
to get a head start on the season like everyone else.
Last summer, East
players attended the weeklong Webster Schroeder camp, along with Penfield,
Webster Thomas, East Rochester/Gananda, Brighton, Wayne, and McQuaid.
“The [East] players
were like kids in a candy store,” said Schroeder coach Tony Bianchi, who added
that the teams participating in the Class AAA and Class AA finals this year
were present at his camp.
The off-season
activities have brought a new focus to City-Catholic football, shining a
spotlight on a sport that boys’ basketball typically overshadows. The
excitement has sparked Franklin to restart its junior varsity program. East now
has 40-plus players on its varsity, JV, and modified rosters, plus a new $2.5
million stadium with lights.
As Brigandi says,
“Things are on the upswing.”
Still, disadvantages
remain. In the suburbs, players can conceivably play many years together in
pee-wee leagues prior to high school. That means they know their teammates’
strengths and styles when they’re freshmen. The players can be effectively
groomed for the high-school program.
In the City-Catholic
league, because there are no neighborhood-based high schools, coaches have
little idea who will be attending their schools. So the football teams are
really constructed from scratch when players are 9th graders, and coaches can
only hope they jell in one or two years.
That’s what makes
East’s run even more remarkable.
When I was a McQuaid student during the late ’80s, I watched East play the Knights in basketball at
the War Memorial on several occasions. East students persistently chanted
“East… High… rocks the house… East High rocks the house” to the backbeat of
this cool rhythm section.
This Sunday, East
High might just rock the house again. You should go.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2004.
