Saints soar

Drew Meady said he just put his head down and kept running.

One-hundred-and-twenty-two yards and two scores later on Thursday, the second-year St. Patrick Fighting Saints running back had led his team to a 25-14 win over the Churchill Trojans (0-2) at Fort William Stadium, its first junior high school football victory of the season.

“I’m just proud of my team,” Meady said. “We had it bad last week, but we came back. Our offensive line played great, and what can I say, I’m just proud of my boys.”

It’s a far cry from last week, when the Saints were trounced by the St. Ignatius Falcons, failing to score in a 34-0 loss.
Meady said the team knew it didn’t perform well in its 2011 debut, and wanted to make amends in a hurry.

“We just worked on keeping our feet moving, working hard and driving down the field. And as you can tell, it paid off.”
St. Patrick coach Dave Bettistel said turning the season around was what this one was all about.

“We weren’t really happy with our performance last week. It was a lot of little mistakes. We played really well in the first part of the game last week and we made some mistakes in the second half,” Bettistel said.

“We really wanted to stress to the guys that the score wasn’t indicative of our performance and that we were capable of a lot better. We came out real hard from the get-go.”

Jake McKee opened the scoring for the Saints, bowling his way 49 yards down the field for a touchdown. But the Trojans had the answer, capping a lengthy drive with an eight-yard Allen Chen run for a score that tied the game 7-7 midway through the opening quarter.

“We worked really hard on our running game and hitting those holes and busting off guys and getting those extra yards. They really ran hard, both of them,” Bettistel said of Meany and McKee, who finished the game with 98 yards of his own.

The Saints, after giving up the score, didn’t waste time marching their way back down the field. McKee had a 15-yard run on a second and long that extended the drive, then McKee scampered for 15 yards and 25 yards on successive plays, the second run resulting in the go-ahead score.

Meady made it 21-7 with a short run just before the half.

After a scoreless third quarter, Churchill pulled to within a touchdown on a five-yard pass from Mike Dychko to receiver Andrew Ktytor, but the passing game took a hit as time wound down.

Tyson Young intercepted a pass deep in St. Patrick territory to stop one drive, then with about a minute to play Joey Busch snagged another errant Dychko pass that led to an Anna MacLean field goal that put the game out of reach.