St. James Lions lone undefeated squad in D10 football
GUELPH – Two touchdowns in the final minute of the game lifted the St. James Lions to a 25-13 victory over the Ross Royals at St. James in the first game of the District 10 football league’s Friday tripleheader.
The win kept the Lions unbeaten and by the time the middle game of Friday’s trio of games was over, the Lions were the lone undefeated team.
The other two games of the day, both played at Alumni Stadium, saw the Bishop Macdonell Celtics defeat the previously-unbeaten Centennial 19-14 and the Lourdes Crusaders scored all their points in the fourth quarter as they got by the Guelph CVI Green Gaels in a battle between two teams that entered the game winless.
While it was the fourth week of the league’s regular season, it was the first week that saw all three games be close battles.
With one week to go in the regular season, St. James leads the league at 4-0 while Bishop Mac and Centennial are both at 3-1. Ross and Lourdes are both at 1-3 and GCVI is at 0-4.
The league is to wrap up its regular season Friday with all three games to be played at Alumni Stadium. A first-place finish could be on the line in the 1 p.m. game between St. James and Centennial while GCVI and Bishop Mac are to clash at 4 p.m. Ross and Lourdes are to battle at 7 p.m. It’ll be a quarter-final playoff preview as the two teams will finish fourth and fifth.
First- and second-place finishers get byes in the quarter-finals and will be the ‘host’ teams in the semifinals. The other quarter-final will have whichever team finishes third play GCVI.
All playoff games are to be held at Alumni Stadium.
The quarter-finals are set for Oct. 27 with games at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Same game times for the Nov. 3 semifinals.
Semifinal winners are to meet in the championship match Nov. 10 at 6 p.m.
St. James 25 Ross 13
The Lions scored 15 points in the final two minutes of the game to claim the win on their own field in their well-attended homecoming game.
Ross conceded a safety with 1:43 to go to cut the lead for the Royals to a single point.
Noah Donnelle barged into the Ross endzone for a TD for the Lions with 55 seconds to go to give St. James a five-point lead when their two-pointer failed.
The Lions secured the win when Owen Evans returned an interception for a TD with 31 seconds to go. Kwynn Stringer kicked the convert.
Ross had led 7-0 at the end of the first quarter while the score was tied 10-10 at halftime. Ross led 13-10 at the end of the third quarter.
The Royals opened the scoring in the game on a TD by Reid Williams with 4:25 to go in the opening quarter. Charlie Thurtell kicked the convert.
Thurtell added a field goal in the second quarter and another one with less than five minutes to go in the third quarter that broke the 10-10 tie.
The Lions had pulled into the tie with a converted TD and a field goal in the final two and a half minutes of the second quarter.
Peyton Cummings caught a TD toss while Stringer kicked the convert and added a field goal in the final minute of the half.
Bishop Macdonell 19 Centennial 14
After a scoreless first quarter, Bishop Mac led 16-7 at halftime and 19-14 at the end of the third quarter.
Most of the scoring for Bishop Mac came from the foot of Dmitri Grieb.
He kicked a field goal in the opening minute of the second quarter, his first of three in the quarter and four in the game.
Grieb kicked field goals with just over three minutes to go in the second quarter and on the final play of the first half. The other field goal came with four and a half minutes gone in the third quarter.
Grieb also kicked a convert on Bishop Mac’s lone TD of the game, an interception return by Marco Piccioni midway through the second quarter.
Matt Stam scored Centennial’s first TD of the match with just over a minute to go in the opening half.
Jackson Leshuk scored the other TD for the Spartans with about two and a half minutes to go in the third quarter.
Mohamed Idris converted both Centennial touchdowns.
Lourdes 17 Guelph CVI 2
Points in the game were hard to come by until the fourth quarter.
GCVI opened the scoring with a safety just over three minutes into the second quarter.
That stood as the only scoring play of the game until the final quarter.
The Crusaders shot ahead two minutes into the fourth quarter on a touchdown by Ashton Phillips. Deison Chang-Herrera booted the convert.
Chang-Herrera had all the other points in the game as he scored a TD that he converted with 2:17 to go in the game and he wrapped up the scoring with a short field goal with two seconds to go.
- Guelph Sports Journal