FOXBOROUGH — It was one half too late for the St. John’s Prep football team.
The Eagles outscored Xaverian 28-14 in the second half of Saturday’s MIAA Division I Super Bowl at Gillette Stadium, but couldn’t climb out of a three-score hole they dug themselves.
In the end, No. 1 St. John’s Prep saw its season end with a 41-35 loss to No. 3 Xaverian — the second title-game defeat at the hands of the Hawks in three years.
Despite trailing 27-7 at halftime, the Eagles had a look late in the fourth quarter on Saturday night. Riding a wave of momentum, and the play of sophomore quarterback Chris Vargas (10-for-25, 217 yards, 3 TDs), Prep trailed just 41-35 and had Xaverian facing a fourth-and-2 with just over two minutes remaining. A stop would put the Eagles near midfield with a chance to win the game with a touchdown.
Quarterback Will Wood faked a handoff and rolled out to his right. The designed bootleg went for three yards, as a diving Wood picked up just enough to move the chains with 2:04 to play. Xaverian ran out the clock from there, securing a third consecutive Division I title.
Despite the loss, St. John’s Prep head coach Brian St. Pierre was proud of the way his team responded from its three-touchdown deficit.
“In life, you’ve got choices to make,” he said of the message to his team. “This is a choice you’re gonna make. You’re gonna show your character, and they did. They definitely showed their character.
“I mean, it could have went a different way, couple yards short of getting that ball back. If we get the ball back, we’re scoring. It was too little, too late, but we can’t throw away a whole half of football — not in a championship game. We didn’t do enough.”
Indeed, it was a disastrous first half for the Eagles. Xaverian racked up 327 yards of offense before intermission, as Wood went for 262 of his 345 yards passing in the opening half. It was 27-7 with the Hawks knocking on the door again in the waning seconds of the second quarter, looking for the knockout blow and a potential four-score cushion. But Wood fumbled the ball on an option run near the goal line, and Prep recovered.
The Eagles got the ball out of halftime and Riley Selvais ran back the opening kickoff for an 80-yard touchdown. Just 11 seconds into the third quarter, it was 27-14.
“You go in, you get that fumble, that could have been a big score [for Xaverian] at halftime, and it gave us life,” said St. Pierre. “And then we just challenged them at halftime. You’ve got to show your character. You’ve got to show what you’re made of, and they did that and then some in the second half.”
Xaverian looked to put the game out of reach several times in the second half, but Prep always had an answer. Trailing 41-21, Vargas hit Ethan Stefanovich for a 30-yard touchdown with 8:05 left in the fourth quarter, and the Eagles followed with an 11-yard TD from Vargas to Stefanovich with 4:54 remaining to pull within 41-35. But Xaverian managed to run out the clock, buoyed by Wood’s key fourth-down conversion, and sealed the deal on a third straight title.
“We struggled to stop them, clearly,” admitted St. Pierre of Xaverian. “We moved the ball on offense, couldn’t finish drives early. Second half, we finished them, certainly, but anytime we got a little momentum, we gave it up. We were just playing from behind too much.”
Vargas’ return from injury bolstered the Prep passing attack, as the sophomore QB injured his knee against Framingham in the opening round of the state tournament and missed the last three games (including a Thanksgiving Day loss to Xaverian). His status entering Saturday’s Super Bowl was unclear, but he started the game and picked up his play with a strong second half. After completing just 3 of 11 passes in the first half, he was 7-for-14 for 136 yards and two TDs after intermission.
“Oh, he’s a competitor,” lauded St. Pierre of Vargas. “He’s a really good player. Obviously, you know, he’s not playing 100%, but he was good. And we worked him hard this week to make sure he was, he got cleared. He was healthy enough to play, but obviously rusty.
“I mean, four weeks ago, before he got hurt, we were cooking with gas as a team. And we’re not that team right now, but we still felt like we had a chance to win this game, and in reality we did, we’ve got to get that stop on fourth down. We didn’t. But there was so many moments in that game that we could have shifted the tide.”
St. John’s Prep is now 6-6 all-time in title game appearances, with its last victory coming in 2022 (a 13-0 win over Springfield Central).
