Football - News Football - News
News | Roster | Schedules--Results | Archives
9/10/06-Football
Only lightning is quicker than Eaglets
By KEITH LANGLOIS
The Oakland Press
ORCHARD LAKE - If the studious seminarians preparing for the priesthood on the bucolic campus of St. Mary's College and Preparatory School were awaiting confirmation of God's keen sense of irony, it came Saturday.
A deluge of Biblical proportions, complete with bolts of lightning delivered from the heavens, delayed the scheduled 1 p.m. kickoff of St. Mary's high school football game with Toledo St. Francis for nearly an hour. They have a rule about these things now. Once lightning is spotted, you wait 30 minutes before starting or resuming play.
Here's the irony: When George Porritt's football team is involved, you're always less than 30 minutes from a lightning strike.
The Eaglets are a big-play, quick-strike, lightning-fast team. And their Ohio visitors kept getting struck and electrified Saturday, losing 28-0 on a day Porritt groused about penalties and preparation and execution.
"No," it took him a nanosecond to respond when I asked if he was happy with what he'd just witnessed. "I think we weren't prepared to play, and as a coach, it really bothers me, the penalties we had. We did some good things, but we just did some silly things ‹ not having a player out there on the punt team. Those things bother you."
But they're not likely to keep him awake nights. Not the way preparing to play his team induces insomnia in his coaching peers. And it's the speed St. Mary's sends at you in waves at the root of it.
"They've got the wideouts that can fly," St. Francis coach Dick Cromwell shook his head, water rolling off the brim of his baseball cap, "the big fullback that can fly and run over you, and a nice quarterback who can throw it and run by you."
Imagine if the grass hadn't been sodden. Or, better yet, imagine if the Eaglets got to play their games on the FieldTurf surfaces that seemingly cover half of metro Detroit these days.
Next week, they will. Next week, St. Mary's plays at Ford Field.
"Big stage," grinned quarterback Justin Siller, a rippling 6-foot-4 horse with a catapult attached to his right shoulder. "That will be our first. FieldTurf, I heard that makes you run faster. With our team speed, that's going to make us that much better."
Cromwell can only imagine. Not that he noticed any diminution in the rate at which St. Mary's chewed up the turf on Saturday.
"I don't think it slowed them down too much," he shrugged. "You try to contain, you try not to give up the big play, you try to be smart. Speed is a huge factor. And we don't have much of it, as you can see. You've got to be able to run and hit. When they're faster and quicker and stronger than you, it makes it tough. You've got to play mistake-free, and we didn't."
Two of St. Francis' biggest mistakes landed in Siller's arms. Though it's his quarterbacking skills that will pay for college - Siller is committed to play for Purdue coach Joe Tiller's pass-happy offense - and might one day make him a handsome living, Siller sparkled on defense Saturday, picking off two passes from his free safety position.
I asked him what's better - throwing touchdown passes or intercepting passes.
"Throwing touchdown passes," he said, lightning fast. "I love to throw. I love throwing. That's what gets you down the field."
He'd probably like to do more of it, and with Dionte Allen split to one side and Taurian Washington to the other, you can understand the temptation.
Allen and Washington were both thought to be headed to Michigan to play their college football, but both chose other destinations. Allen wore a Florida State T-shirt under his jersey Saturday, and that's where he'll play. Washington - shudder! - will play at Ohio State. On that fateful August day when they made their intentions known, the sound of hearts breaking caused a seismic event in Ann Arbor.
As long as they all stay healthy, there's every chance St. Mary's will make another serious run at the state championship that eluded them last year when Siller broke his hand and couldn't play in the postseason. Birmingham Brother Rice, which lost twice to St. Mary's during the season, took full advantage of the Eaglets' vulnerabilities to win the third meeting and went on to win the Division II state title.
"Everything happens for a reason," Siller said. "God's plan. It wasn't meant for us to win last year. This year, we're going to come out and try to get it done. We can be great. Our expectation is to win a state championship, as always, and that's what we're going to try to do.
"Anything to help our team win," he says when you ask him about the wisdom of risking another injury by playing defense. "Get a 'W.' That's the most important thing. If I have to play both sides, special teams, whatever, I'll do it."
"He's a high school football player," Porritt said. "The bottom line, you get out there and play. It's his senior year. It's high school ball, not a greater time in a kid's life. He can play both sides of the ball. Yeah, you always have concerns, but you've got to play and he's doing a great job of it. Do we worry about it? Yeah, probably we do. But that's the way it goes."
Here's the way it goes on the bucolic campus of St. Mary's College and Preparatory School: fast.
Copyright 2006, St. Mary's Preparatory, Orchard Lake, Michigan. All rights reserved.
No logos, photographs, or graphics on the site may be reproduced without written permission.