QBs Shine as West Catholic Earns 3-Peat
November 28, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
DETROIT – Grand Rapids West Catholic might have won its third straight Division 5 championship Saturday night with either sophomore Gaetano Vallone or junior David Fox playing every snap at quarterback.
But it was impossible to argue the duo’s effectiveness as they worked together to keep the Falcons ahead of a River Rouge comeback attempt led by another quarterback putting up near-record numbers.
Fox, the starter when the season began, and Vallone – who took over when Fox was lost with a shoulder injury in Week 3 – combined for 288 yards rushing and 106 passing as West Catholic held on for a third straight Finals win, 40-34, despite the heroics of Panthers senior signal-caller Antoine Burgess.
“We’re both athletic, we’re both physical and I guess Coach (Dan) Rohn says we’re playmakers, so we’re playmakers,” Vallone said. “It definitely helped because we’re both gamers, and that’s what it takes. With two of us back there … it really can spread things out and get them confused.”
The Finals appearance was West Catholic's fifth straight, but Vallone was among players who had significant impacts for the first time this fall.
Fox ran for 152 yards and three touchdowns from his “scat” quarterback position, while Vallone ran for 115 yards and threw for 84 and a score despite being limited by an ankle injury sustained during last weekend’s Semifinal win over Lansing Catholic.
Fox’s third touchdown run just 16 seconds into the second half gave West Catholic (12-2) a seemingly comfortable 21-6 lead.
But that would’ve counted River Rouge out far too early.
Burgess brought the Panthers back within seven with a 63-yard touchdown pass to senior Aaron Vinson with 3:56 left in the third quarter, then responded to Vallone’s 9-yard scoring pass with a 1-yard touchdown run 1:06 into the fourth.
The teams traded scores four more times, the last a 2-yard run by Burgess with four seconds to play. An onside kick was covered by the Falcons, denying Burgess one last chance at another deep toss to tie the score.
“I just told (my teammates) not to give up yet and play hard. It wasn’t over,” Burgess said. “Like I saw yesterday, King came back and won the (Division 2) game. I told them we could do that too. I continue to fight no matter what.”
A few more key plays figured into the final score, notably a tackle for a safety by West Catholic senior Conner Nemmers with 7:15 to play, followed by a 31-yard field goal by sophomore Liam Putz that made the Falcons’ lead 12 with 4:13 left in regulation. And while it didn’t lead to a score directly, Fox’s 22-yard pass to senior Billy Kral on a fake punt helped the Falcons drain a few more seconds off the clock – and ended up setting up the safety when Fox drilled a 53-yard punt to the River Rouge 3-yard line five plays later.
For the game, Burgess threw for 354 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 70 yards and two scores – missing the MHSAA Finals record for total yardage by only two and approaching the record of 383 passing yards set by Detroit Martin Luther King’s Armani Posey in the Division 2 Final on Friday.
But Burgess and his teammates made it a memorable night for a community that had six straight sub-.500 seasons before coach Corey Parker took over in 2009. The Panthers set a record for wins this fall in making the Finals for the first time and finishing 12-2.
“I think we’ve arrived, to a certain extent, in reference to the way my kids handled things,” said Parker, who has led his teams to a combined 40-7 record over the last four seasons. “To watch them manage this process, it tells me a lot about my guys and what we’ve developed as far as a foundation.
“Most press writers thought they were going to bail us out 50-something to zip. But my guys looked at that opportunity and said hey, let’s see how good they really are.”
Burgess completed 13 of 19 passes, with Vinson grabbing four for 162 yards, sophomore Giovanni Turner catching four for 95 and a score and senior Ashawnti Howard pulling in three for 84 yards and a touchdown. Junior Aaron Hall caught West Catholic’s lone touchdown pass, and junior Sam Neville had the team’s final points on a 3-yard run with 1:27 to play.
Fox, also a safety, led the Falcons with eight tackles, and senior lineman Carl Myers had seven. Sophomore safety Reggie Pearson had 10 for River Rouge, and senior defensive end Jamal Bonner also had seven.
West Catholic defeated three top-10 teams and a fourth that earned an honorable mention in the final statewide media poll to get back to Detroit, before downing River Rouge, another honorable mention. Not bad for a team that started 1-2, lost a starting quarterback and had another on a sore ankle the last two weeks.
“We had a small senior class, and I think a lot of people doubted this group since they came in as one of our smallest classes in history. But for them to be here four years is pretty remarkable,” Rohn said. “All along we knew we had a tough early schedule. … We just said, let’s just stick to our guns. We’ve been 1-3 and 1-4 in recent years and we’ve still been able to make it back down here. So the kids buy into the scheme, continue to work hard and believe in the coaches. Because a lot of people would quit at 1-2. Not this group, not this community.”
The MHSAA Football Finals are sponsored by the Michigan National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) West Catholic’s David Fox (4) and Gaetano Vallone (6) celebrate a touchdown during Saturday’s Final. (Middle) River Rouge quarterback Antoine Burgess breaks away from a tackle.
Pontiac Notre Dame Prep Welcomes Frantic Fun of 1st Trip to Football Finals
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
November 29, 2024
Betty Wroubel has never been so happy to have a bit of chaos and unfamiliar busyness descend upon her and the athletic department at Pontiac Notre Dame Prep this week.
An administrator at the school for 45 years — dating back to the days when it was known as Pontiac Catholic — Wroubel and her colleagues always wondered what things would be like if the football program ever made a state championship game.
This week, all that dreaming turned into reality as the Fighting Irish advanced to Saturday’s Division 5 Final against Frankenmuth. As expected, it’s been frantic.
Phone calls and emails from alumni and other school officials have come in droves, hoping there is room on the sideline for them even when there are limited spots available.
“I think the most difficult part has been telling people no,” said Notre Dame Prep associate athletic director Aaron Crouse.
There have been several phone calls placed to fellow administrators or other coaches who have been there to inquire about all the little things not normally thought about.
Should we have the team go down Friday to check out those games in order to get more familiar with the environment?
Is it best to gather up a bus to transport students down, or just send the link to tickets and tell everyone they are on their own?
Of course, trying to figure out such logistics has been a labor of love.
“They are good problems to have,” Wroubel said. “I’ll take these problems. It’s exciting and worth it.”
While the athletic administrators have felt the energy in their offices, the same can’t quite be said for the Notre Dame Prep team itself.
There were no classes during the week due to Thanksgiving break, so the buzz of making a football Final for the first time wasn’t really felt in the hallways.
The advantage to that though is that the Notre Dame Prep players have pretty much been able to focus on football, and given the season the Fighting Irish have had, they don’t really need any more perks to be at their best.
Notre Dame Prep enters with an 11-1 record, its only loss coming in the regular-season finale against Hudsonville Unity Christian.
The Fighting Irish recorded wins over perennial powers Jackson Lumen Christi and Grand Rapids Catholic Central, and bigger Oakland Activities Association schools such as Troy and Ferndale.
In his 11th year leading the program, Pat Fox also will coach in a Final for the first time after more than three decades in that role on a high school sideline.
Fox has several mentors who have helped guide him along the way, including former Rockford and current Newaygo head coach Ralph Munger, former Chelsea head coach Brad Bush and former Saginaw Arthur Hill head coach Jim Eurick.
Fox had planned on chatting more with Munger and Bush this week about the logistics of making a Final.
Regarding his team, Fox said getting this far is especially rewarding since he has been in the same building with many of his players for over a decade and has watched them grow up.
“My quarterback, I remember seeing him in the building when he was a little toddler,” Fox said.
That quarterback is junior Sam Stowe, who Fox credited with sticking with the program and waiting for his turn instead of trying to transfer for more playing time as a freshman or sophomore.
Stowe and Notre Dame Prep have been rewarded greatly for that patience, as he has thrown for more than 2,500 yards and 38 touchdowns, and has a completion percentage of 72 percent going into Saturday.
The Fighting Irish also have a core of six players who have been starters the past three years: WR/LB Billy Collins, DL/RB Drew Heimbuch, WR/LB Mike Wiebelhaus, WR/DB Joey Decasas, OL/LB Luca Gasperoni and OL/DL Jake Gartin.
Fox also said junior LB Brody Sink has developed into a Division I college prospect with his play this year.
“They’ve been through a lot of wars and have been great,” Fox said. “We have really good team speed.”
Wroubel and Crouse said they and other school officials “saw this coming” with how the program was trending up and being built right over the years. But the reality of what was happening didn’t fully set in until the fourth quarter of a Semifinal win over Flat Rock.
“Administrators were crying out there,” Wroubel said.
Come Saturday, the Notre Dame Prep community hopes there will be more tears in celebration of the program’s first state championship.
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Notre Dame Prep quarterback Sam Stowe (15) takes a snap against Detroit Central during a 49-14 Week 1 win. (Middle) The Fighting Irish, including Drew Heimbuch (5), line up before a game. (Photos courtesy of the Pontiac Notre Dame Prep athletic department.)