EVERETT — Some losses drive you around the bend. Others, as much as they may hurt, have silver linings.
Put Saturday’s 26-14 loss to Everett into the latter category for the St. John’s Prep football team. For even though the 2-1 Eagles lost to the Crimson Tide, they stood tall against the 3-0 juggernauts on their own field (Everett Stadium). It wasn’t until a late-game spectacular 66-yard run by Virginia Tech-bound Mike Sainristil that Everett could exhale.
However, Prep coach Brian St. Pierre wasn’t interested in talking about Everett — gaudy stats by Sainristil and quarterback Dillon Doherty notwithstanding.
“I loved coaching this team today,” said St. Pierre. “We played hard, we competed and we gutted it out.”
It didn’t escape St. Pierre’s notice that his players, especially up front, gave the Crimson Tide all they could handle.
“They were gassed,” St. Pierre said. “You could see it. They called a lot of timeouts there at the end.”
Since the Tide didn’t get too much of a running game going, they relied on Doherty to move them up and down the field, and did he ever. The senior quarterback connected on 14-of-24 pass attempts for 229 yards. Sainristil caught four of them for 57 yards, but Doherty spread the ball among three other receivers as well.
Meanwhile, junior quarterback Matt Crowley, especially in the first half, was the Eagles’ stemwinder. In all, he threw for 147 yards and a touchdown.
The game was a tale of two halves. In the first two quarters, Everett built up a 20-7 lead on the strength of Doherty’s arm. On its third possession, after taking over with good field position on their own 41, the Tide took three plays to score, with the clincher coming on Doherty’s 55-yard pass to Eli Auguste that made the score 7-0.
The ensuing kickoff pinned the Eagles back to their own 10, but Crowley got to work, completing passes of 11, 10 and 15 yards to set St. John’s up with a first down on its own 45. Key throws to Trent Tully (9 yards) and Aise Pream (17) kept the drive alive, and Crowley eventually went over from the 1-yard line to tie the score.
Everett owned the second quarter, scoring touchdowns on a 6-yarder from Doherty to Isaac Seide and another 6-yard touchdown pass to Tyrese Baptiste to make it 20-7 by the half.
Pream and the rest of the Prep runners couldn’t get much traction in the first half, “but we challenged our guys at the half,” said St. Pierre. “We asked them to fire out and give our runners some holes.”
Whatever he said worked. Pream, who only ran for seven first-half yards, caught fire and rushed for 67 in the final two quarters. His running keyed St. John’s second touchdown drive, which culminated with Crowley’s touchdown pass to Anthony Fagan that made the score 20-14.
As the second half wore on, St. John’s began to take control when Crowley was picked off by Auguste. But the Eagles weathered that storm, forcing Everett to punt with under four minutes to go in the game. Freshman James Guy provided a huge spark as the Eagles moved down field, rushing three times for 26 yards. However, the drive stalled. And when Everett took over on its own 34, Sainristil, on the Tide’s first play, blew through a hole on a sweep left and raced the Eagles to the end zone, and he won.
St. John’s hosts Westford Academy Friday night (7).