GILROY—Christopher’s Matt Adamkiewicz was one of the first players to reach the Severance Bell and he let it ring for all of Gilroy to hear. The junior QB led his team to it’s fourth straight Severance Bowl victory, reaching the endzone six times both in the air and on the ground en route to a 48-10 win over the Mustangs Friday at Gilroy High.
In one game, Christopher crossed off three more of its goals for the season. The win over Gilroy means the Cougars not only retain the Severance Bell, but win the South County Championship for the second year in a row—having beat Sobrato and Live Oak to start the season—as well as make them the new outright Monterey Bay League Pacific Division Champions.
“There’s a bunch of good stuff going on,” Christopher coach Tim Pierleoni said with a bright smile beaming on his face. “The goals that we set, we’re right on the track that we need to be.”
“I love this game and I hate this game to be honest with you,” Pierleoni continued. “I’m a Gilroy High graduate, I’m a Mustang, so it hurts in some ways. But I love my kids and I love the way my kids played tonight.”
Adamkiewicz was a huge part of the night’s win and has been an integral part of the Cougars’ success all season. He was on point again against Gilroy, completing 24 of his 34 passes for 450 yards and five touchdowns in the air—including a 58-yarder to Max Sanford on their first play from scrimmage. The junior QB added two more on the ground for 2 and 9 yards, respectively. The first came just two plays after he broke free for a 41-yard run and got the Cougars to the 4-yard-line. He had just one miscue—an interception by Patrick Hsu—late in the game.
“I thought we did excellent,” Adamkiewicz said. “They brought the blitz all game and our line did excellent; they completely picked it up. For five guys going against seven, I thought we did a great job. I have to give it to our receivers, too. They caught the ball and they did awesome.”
The Cougar receiving core was as stellar as ever and saw eight different players connect with Adamkiewicz. Sanford led the team in receptions with seven for 177 yards and two touchdowns. His second came with just 53.2 seconds left in the half when he pulled down a catch and found space to run up the middle to complete the 31-yard play. The TD gave Christopher a 21-10 lead at the half and the momentum for the remainder of the game.
Adamkiewicz also hit PJ Reichert in coverage for a 16-yard score with 8:01 left in the third to put the team up 34-10 at that point. Christopher’s final touchdown was a 36-yard dash from Anthony Sammut that ended with him stretching an arm into the endzone for the score.
But it wasn’t always so lopsided.
After Christopher’s opening TD, Gilroy answered with one of its own. The Mustangs completed a seven-play, 33-yard march down field with DeAngelo Kamber punching the ball in from the 2-yard-line. Sean Kaufman’s kick was good and the score was tied at 7-7 with 5:24 left in the first half.
Christopher answered with a 14-yard TD pass from Adamkiewicz to Sammut to lead 14-7 at the end of the first, but that’s all it would get until much later in the quarter.
Gilroy, however, got itself into the redzone after QB David Munoz took advantage of a hole in the Cougar defense and went on a 61-yard run. This brought the Mustangs to Christopher’s 4-yard-line, but they would get pushed back to the 10 and have to settle for a field goal. Kaufman’s kick was near perfect and Gilroy was right back in it, trailing 14-10.
“This is always a hard game whether you win or lose because the seniors are gone; it’s the last one,” Mustangs coach Brian Boyd said. “It’s emotional; we were playing right with them. We had some really bad break downs in coverage in the beginning (which) gave them some touchdowns. We could run the ball all over them. They couldn’t stop us. We planned to keep running the ball, but started getting banged up a little bit.”
David Montes played through a knee injury and picked up big yards for Gilroy while doing it. The senior running back had 108 yards on 16 carries. Munoz had eight for 74 yards in addition to going 9 for 19 for 110 yards in the air. He was intercepted twice, first by Isaac McCrimon with 11.6 seconds left in the half and again by Bryant Huynh midway through the third quarter.
It was the last game senior captain and leader of the defense Darius Alexander-Jones would play on his home field and he took a minute to pay homage to the “G” at midfield. Alexander-Jones and the rest of the Gilroy defense displayed a great effort, especially in the second when they held Christopher scoreless until the final minute.
Nonetheless, the loss was hard to swallow for the senior, but he held his head high as he walked off the field one final time.
“We did good. I’m happy with the outcome of the season. No matter the record or (winning) the Bell or not, I wouldn’t want to change it at all,” Alexander-Jones said. “It was just easier getting through it with my brothers.”
The Mustangs said they were going to be physical and the Christopher defense answered with muscle of its own. Both teams saw players go down, but Gilroy suffered at the hands of the injury bug just a little more. Mustang after Mustang headed to the sideline, which seemed to silence their momentum—especially in the second half.
“It was just one and two and three and four. One guys was limping and then the next guy was limping and it just kept catching up to us,” Boyd said. “We knew it was going to (be physical) and we wanted to be on the upper end of being the physical part and I think us being so physical maybe hurt ourselves a little bit.”
Gilroy ends its season 3-7 overall, 3-3 in league play. Though the season didn’t go the way the Mustangs wanted, Boyd said the future of the program looks bright.
“I’m looking forward to next year,” the Mustang coach said. “We’ve got things to work on and we’ve got a good core of 18 kids back. We’ll bring all the JV up and we’re looking at a good 50 (kids) on varsity next year.”
“We would’ve liked to have been a little bit better in league and have it come down getting into the playoffs—that was our goal,” Boyd continued. “The boys did some great things with GPA and stuff for me this year. We’re on the right track.”
Christopher ends the regular season 9-1 overall and a perfect 6-0 in league. It awaits its seeding for the Central Coast Section playoffs which will be announced Sunday.
The Cougars have reached all their goals so far, but still have three left to cross off.
Now that they’ve reached the playoffs, they want to 1. Make it out of the first round, which leads to 2. Practice on Thanksgiving Day as well as 3. Beating a West Catholic League team.
“We’re going to go in on Monday and we’re going to work extremely hard—harder than we probably ever have this whole season,” Adamkiewicz said.
Check back with the Dispatch for who, when and where the Cougars will play in the first round of the CCS playoffs.
