FOXBOROUGH — One play remaining. One second on the clock. One last chance for St. John’s Prep.
But for the Eagles, this storybook ending didn’t go as they hoped.
Quarterback Deacon Robillard’s pass towards the end zone fell incomplete, and the Xaverian football team began their celebration on the Gillette Stadium turf. The Hawks had gone toe-to-toe and blow-for-blow with the defending state champions and came out on top, 31-25, in the Division 1 Super Bowl on this chilly Wednesday night.
“I thought it was an unbelievable high school football game,” an emotional St. John’s Prep head coach Brian St. Pierre said afterwards. “Great competition, the best competition in New England. One team had to lose, and it’s unfortunate it had to be us.”
The two teams were playing for the second time in a week, with Xaverian having beaten St. John’s, 23-21, on Thanksgiving Day.
It was St. John’s Prep’s fourth Super Bowl appearance in the last five playoff seasons dating back to 2018 (minus the non-playoff Covid year of 2020).
In a heavyweight battle that saw five lead changes Wednesday night, top-seeded St. John’s Prep (11-2) took a 25-21 lead into the fourth quarter after Robillard (7-for-17, 140 yards, 3 TDs) hit fullback Gael Garcia on a play action fake for a 16-yard score late in the third quarter.
But Xaverian, the No. 2 seed, saw quarterback Henry Hasselbeck connect with his favorite receiver, Caleb Brown, for his third touchdown reception, an 18-yarder, two plays into the final frame to give the Hawks the lead for good. Luke Bell added a 33-yard field goal with 5:07 to go for good measure.
Xaverian (11-2) head coach Al Fornaro told his players the story of the old North Cambridge Catholic boys basketball teams, a small Boston city school that had some of the state’s best teams three decades ago because they simply would never give up.
“They were just going to play until someone turned the lights off,” said Fornaro, pausing to look up at the halogens atop Gillette Stadium. “Well, the lights are still on here.”
The Eagles were forced to punt the ball back to Xaverian with 3:24 to go, but their defense held, forcing the Hawks to go 3-and-out. A long punt gave the Prep possession at its own 37 with 2:14 remaining.
On 4th-and-14, Robillard scrambled and found Jack Angelopolus for a 36-yard gain down the right sideline, giving the Eagles life with just over a minute to play. They reached the Xaverian 15-yard line before a pair of sacks cost them 11 yards, and two final pass attempts went by the wayside.
“It’s too raw right now,” said St. Pierre. “I just love my guys. They just got their hearts ripped out, and I just want to be with them right now more than anything and want them to know how much I admire them for everything they do and what they give to our program.”
Senior running back Cam LaGrassa ran for 107 yards on 20 carries to power the Prep’s ground attack.
Hasselbeck, who may be headed to UCLA, caused trouble for the Eagles for much of the evening, especially when he called his own number. Sprung to the outside on numerous occasions with key blocks, he finished with 124 yards rushing on 13 carries, including a 55-yarder that set up teammate Mike O’Connor’s 1-yard TD plunge in the third quarter.
“They’ve got five guys between the tackles. So if we were going to try and run the ball between the tackles I should fire myself,” Fornaro said. “So we tried to get to the edge with a little bit of speed.”
“We struggled to stop them on defense. We did last week, too,” St. Pierre admitted.
Captain Mason McSweeney caused a Hasselbeck fumble on the game’s second play and teammate Anthony Carusi recovered. Five plays later the Eagles scored when Jimmy Nardone blasted his way in from a yard out. The 2-point conversion rush by Nardone, however, was ruled short of the goal line.
“That first 2-point conversion hurt us. Put us behind,” St. Pierre acknowledged. “We were in, too. That hurt because it put us behind, playing catch up with the extra points. It’s unfortunate; (the game officials) saw it and I think they saw on the video board afterwards that they missed it. That didn’t decide the game … but it put us behind a little bit.”
Hasselbeck found Brown for a 19-yard score early in the second quarter, and the point after gave Xaverian a 7-6 lead. Hasselbeck and Brown connected again with 1:04 until halftime, this one from 25 yards out, expanding Hawks’ advantage to eight points.
But the Prep drove downfield quickly, going 60 yards in five plays as Robillard hit Merrick Barlow with a perfectly placed 38-yard scoring pass. Again the conversion rush came up short, leaving the Eagles down two (14-12) at the break.
A Robillard-to-Gavin Gold scoring pass from 23 yards out on the opening drive of the third quarter put the Eagles (who scored 465 points in their 13 games) back on top, 18-14.
The Eagles’ senior class, which won 30 games over the past three seasons, was lauded by their head coach after the game.
“I can’t compare it to others, but it has to be right up there,” said St. Pierre. “They’ve been to two Super Bowls in three years and a Final Four as sophomores, plus had a season wiped out by Covid freshman year. They’ve been through a lot.
“To play so hard and to have it end like this, it’s hard.”
Xaverian 31, St. John’s Prep 25
Division 1 Super Bowl
at Gillette Stadium, Foxborough
Xaverian (11-2);0;14;7;10;31
St. John’s Prep (11-2);6;6;13;0;25
Scoring summary
SJP — Jimmy Nardone 1 run (rush failed)
X — Caleb Brown 19 pass from Henry Hasselbeck (Joe MacDonald kick)
X — Brown 25 pass from Hasselbeck (Luke Bell kick)
SJP — Merrick Barlow 38 pass from Deacon Robillard (rush failed)
SJP — Gael Garcia 4 run (kick failed)
X — Mike O’Connor 1 run (Bell kick)
SJP — Garcia 16 pass from Robillard (Langdon Laws kick)
X — Brown 18 pass from Hasselbeck (Bell kick)
X — Bell 33 field goal
Individual Statistics
RUSHING: Xaverian — Henry Hasselbeck 13-124, Mike O’Connor 19-71, Sean Bernier 6-9; St. John’s Prep — Cam LaGrassa 20-107, Deacon Robillard 11-38, Gael Garcia 4-13, Jimmy Nardone 3-6.
PASSING: Xaverian — Hasselbeck 7-13-102-3-0; St. John’s Prep — Robillard 7-17-140-3-0.
RECEIVING: Xaverian — Caleb Brown 3-62, Jordan Wilson 2-20, Christian McIntyre 1-10, William Benting 1-10; St. John’s Prep — Merrick Barlow 1-38, Jack Angelopolus 1-36, Gavin Gold 2-34, Mason McSweeney 1-18, Garcia 1-16, LaGrassa 1-(-2).