MONROE/BEVERLY HILLS — They won’t be appearing in the Prep Bowl because they’re not members of the Catholic High School League, but both Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central and Pontiac Notre Dame Prep have been playing championship-level football this fall.
Just past the halfway point of the season, both squads are 5-0 and state-ranked in their respective divisions.
St. Mary Catholic Central is a longtime member of the Huron League, a conference composed of medium-sized public schools that all out-rank the Falcons enrollment-wise. Despite that, SMCC has won its first four league contests, collectively outscoring its opponents 145-8.
Its latest victory came Friday night in 32-0 homecoming game against Milan at historic Navarre Field.
“I thought our kids did some really good things,” SMCC coach Adam Kipf said. “Milan’s a really tough team; that score is not indicative of who they are. Our kids just came out and did some great things up front on both sides of the ball, I thought our offense executed very well today. I’m proud of the effort from our kids.”
St. Mary Catholic Central scored each of the first five times it had the ball, and outgained Milan 300 to 75 yards over the course of the game.
Senior Drew Harris scored on an 11-yard run in the first quarter, an 18-yard run in the second quarter, and a 19-yard run in the third, and kicked the extra points following all three of his touchdowns. He led the team with 113 yards on 16 rushing attempts.
“Our coach told us that homecoming week brings a lot of distractions and we should just stay focused on the game,” Harris said. “Our main focus is just finishing out games this year, and so we came out here and we played hard.”
The Falcons’ ground game has been unstoppable over the first half of the season, yet Kipf is challenging his team to take it up a notch.
“We switched from under center to (shot-)gun, and I think our kids have been doing a really nice job with it,” he said. “Our kids seem to embrace this a little bit more, so they’re bought in to what we’re doing, and I think it’s really changing their mindsets.”
With such a successful ground attack, SMCC rarely throws the ball, but it can excel in that aspect as well. When a Milan punt gave the Falcons the ball at their own 19-yard line 1:50 before halftime, Ian Foster completed three quick passes to get the ball across midfield, before Cole Reinhardt and Harris capped the drive by traveling the remaining yardage on foot. Harris scored 11.8 seconds before the homecoming halftime festivities began.
There’s also a bit of trickery in the Falcon playbook, which makes the offense extra hard to stop.
“We want to make the defense wrong, and I think our kids are getting really good at that,” Kipf said. “Early on we were trying to get outside, but we kept cutting back in because that’s what they were giving us, so our kids are doing a nice job reading defenses and seeing them. Our vision on the field has improved tremendously this year, and they’re finding the open spots, and that’s making the offense go.”
But don’t overlook the Falcon defense, which pitched its third consecutive shutout, following up a 28-0 victory over Carleton Airport and 49-0 over Grosse Ile.
“It’s a big game, it’s homecoming, we laid the goose egg — that’s three goose eggs in a row — it’s big for us,” Harris said. “We’re going game-to-game, and 5-0 just came our way. We’re just going to play the game — the outcome is the outcome.”
St. Mary Catholic Central has made the state playoffs in 21 out of the past 24 years, and won state championships in 2019 and 2014. Still, it’s been 10 years since the Falcons have been undefeated this late in the season.
“We’re trying to emphasize to our kids that each week is a one-game tournament. We’re in a nice position, but we’ve got a pretty formidable foe in Riverview this week. We know that it’s going to be a knock-out, drag-out game, and our kids better respond to it,” Kipf said. “I don’t expect to be perfect in Week 5, but I expect to work toward perfection every week as we go forward.”
Notre Dame Prep is winning, too
Like St. Mary Catholic Central, Notre Dame Prep is also on a roll. The Fighting Irish jumped out to a three-touchdown lead in the first quarter Saturday, going on to defeat Birmingham Detroit Country Day, 42-6, and garner their fifth victory of the season.
Sam Stowe threw touchdown passes to Billy Collins covering 25 yards, Joey DeCasas (31 yards) and another to Collins (44 yards, off a defender’s tip) before the game was 12 minutes old, stunning the host Yellowjackets.
Drew Heimbuch scored on a 1-yard burst late in the second quarter, and Notre Dame Prep sent the game into running-clock mode early in the third after Stowe hooked up with DeCasas for a 14-yard touchdown reception that made the score 35-0.
And this wasn’t the first time the Fighting Irish have grabbed the momentum right out of the box.
“We throw 50 percent of the time, we have a high-tempo offense, a quarterback-driven offense, and we play a pressure defense with a lot of pre-snap movement. On special teams we’ve blocked five punts this year,” head coach Pat Fox said. “We have some of the best and brightest kids coming to our school, and we want to challenge them mentally. Kids want to throw the ball; kids want to catch the ball.”
Notre Dame Prep outgained Country Day, 400 to 121 yards, with 236 of those coming through the air as Stowe completed 19 of 28 attempts.
While beating highly regarded Country Day is a way to get noticed, it hasn’t been the only impressive victory for Fox’s team this fall. The Fighting Irish raised their profile significantly by beating defending state champions Jackson Lumen Christi (28-24) and Grand Rapids Catholic Central (42-0) in consecutive home games Sept. 6 and 13.
“The stretch when we went back-to-back with state champions, that was quite a deal, then we came back with Troy, which is a Division 1 school, and then our rivals (Country Day),” Fox said. “We made our schedule last winter. We knew we were a good football team, but you really don’t know how people are that you’re going to play. There are some (teams) on our schedule we really anticipated playing a good football team, and other teams that were OK.”
Notre Dame Prep formerly played in the Catholic League before going independent in 2015. Since then, the school has had to search far and wide to fill its schedule — for example, the Fighting Irish will next travel to Reed City on Oct. 4 — but Fox said it helps keep the program at the top of its game.
“Last year we had five teams on our schedule that won their leagues, and four of them won district championships,” he said. “You just kind of keep your nose down, focus on each game, and play and find another way to win.”
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