While the St. Anne’s-Belfield left some points on the field and off the board on a pair of turnover on downs in the redzone, the hole they faced late in the third quarter was a little too familiar.
The defending VISAA Division 3 champs, Virginia Episcopal, stood tall on a trio of touchdowns from Ronnie Stringfield – two long rushing strikes and a pick six – until the Saints came to and decided to make it game. Behind 19 unanswered points and another a late fourth quarter drive into the redzone, STAB came awfully close to its first win since its 2011 season finale, but the Bishops found a way to come up with a stop defensively and force one last turnover on downs to end the game with three straight kneel downs for a 22-19 win.
“I don’t know what it is, but my kids like adversity, it gives me a heart attack half the time,” said VES coach Albert Jennings. “The Bishop brand of football is passion, pride, responsibility, determination, excellence. The thing I feel good about, that I told my team, we’re not going to talk about the disappointments. What we talked about was about how proud I was of them for finishing. When I get home, we’re going to have a board meeting. But (tonight) they finished.”
For Jennings the win came as a relief as his squad only aided the comeback attempt, particularly after the Saints scored their first touchdown, a 6-yard strike through the air from Lee Parkhill to Brodie Phillips that was set up on a 34-yard reception to receiver Kareem Johnson. On the ensuing drive, the Bishops fumbled and STAB linebacker Robbie Simeone scooped up the loose ball and run it back 23 yards for a touchdown to finish out the third quarter with his team now just down 22-13.
“I will tell you one thing, (STAB coach) John Blake has done a heck of a job between last year and this year with his roster being young,” Jennings said. “Wow. Wow.”
The Saints made it even more interesting. After a pair of three and outs by both sides, STAB sophomore Jalen Harrison took a short Parkhill pass 64 yards down the field to make it a 3-point game with 8:59 to go in the contest.
“The one thing I’ve got to give our guys is that we competed,” Blake said. “We could have easily packed it in and we didn’t. We came back and made some plays and got back into it and had a shot at the end. I’m just real proud of them. I’ll be honest, I saw more tonight than I have in a while.”
It was a struggle from there on out with the Bishops trying to run out the clock with Stringfield and their plus-sized zone-blocking offensive line. With the game winding down, the Saints got one last gasp starting at its own 14-yard line. Harrison came up with a 36-yard reception to put STAB back in the redzone, but the drive stalled and was further marred by an intentional grounding on third down to make it a hail mary fourth down situation. After just missing on a post route that would have converted a new set of downs, the Saints gave the ball back the Bishops without any timeouts and inside of two minutes allowing VES to run out the clock.
Stringfield, last year’s Old Dominion Football Conference player of the year, had 120 yards on the ground on 40 carries including a 46-yard TD run to open up the scoring and Jennings thought it could have been a better night were it not for the Saints containing the edge and playing their new unconventional defensive style.
“They weren’t penetrating, it felt like they were playing basketball and so we were missing reads on the line, blocks but Ronnie still made a heck of a couple runs and refuses to go down, everyone saw that,” Jennings said.
For STAB, Parkhill threw for 273 yards and three touchdowns. Johnson had 115 yards receiving while Harrison added 129 yards.
“Lee did a great job,” Blake said. “He had one bad ball that he’d like to have back that Ronnie ran for the touchdown but he was great and you can’t argue with that. (Johnson and Harrison) both of those guys, I’m glad they’re on my team. We just to figure out more ways to make it work and we have to figure out how to run the ball a little.”
The Saints (0-1) host Bishop Sullivan on Friday at 7 p.m.
