THUNDER BAY – The St. Ignatius Falcons will get the chance to defend their high school senior football championship.
The north-side school overcame an early deficit on Saturday to the last-place St. Patrick Saints, scoring 33 unanswered points to claim a 33-7 semifinal triumph and a shot at a fifth high school title in the past six seasons.
It was the Jordan Maki show at Fort William Stadium.
The St. Ignatius quarterback threw for three much-needed touchdowns as the Falcons run game all but evaporated against a Saints team poised to pull off the biggest upset in recent high school football history.
In the end, it was a defensive play that turned the tide – and one the Saints visited on themselves.
Pinned deep in their own zone and locked in a 7-7 tie, rather than kicking on third down, punter Luke Loree-Spacek was instructed to turn tail and run out of the back of the end zone.
The safety gave St. Patrick its first lead of the afternoon and they never looked back.
Cameron Hughes struck first, racing into the end zone from three yards out to make it 16-7 Falcons and, off a broken play in the final minute, Maki somehow managed to evade a possible sack, regrouped and connected with a wide-open Dylan Darosa for a 35-yard score that put the game out of reach.
“I just saw Maki rolling out, got on the sidelines wide open for him. He gave me a perfect pass and I just took off. (Jacob) Anton made a beautiful block for me and I just ran her in,” Darosa said.
Kicker Kieran Mulligan added a 14-yard field goal in the third and Maki hit Taylor Lehto for a 37-yard strike to set up a two-yard touchdown run by Aaron Sacek, listed as an outside linebacker on the St. Ignatius roster.
Maki said the Falcons are taking it one step at a time, but this was a big one.
“That was the first goal we wanted to do,” the veteran signal-caller said. “We want to get to city’s. Like coach just said, we got the semis and now we’ve just got to work hard to get through the finals and win it,” Maki said.
Big-time quarterbacks often put their teams on their shoulders and Maki was no different on Saturday afternoon, silencing the usually vocal Vikings contingent who braved frigid temperatures in hopes Hammarskjold would return to the final for a second straight year.
“The run game wasn’t working a little bit. We were a little slow on that. But in the end the passes were working, so we kept going to it,” Maki said.
The Saints lone score of the day came midway through the opening quarter, when Jordan Malench took it home untouched from the St. Ignatius four-yard line, the play made possible by a 39-yard punt return by Loree-Spacek.
St. Ignatius coach Jason Moore said the early deficit could be the wake-up call his team might need to propel them to another title.
“I’m hoping so,” he said. “Our practice this week was really slow. That’s kind of what we saw in the first quarter. So it took us to the second quarter to come around. We can’t do that in the next game,” Moore said.
The championship final is set for Saturday at 3 p.m.
