Mariners Football Outlasts St. Ignatius in Rain-Soaked Championship Game
Story and Photos By Michael Oppenheimer
Since winning the school’s first football Central Coast Section championship title in 2003, the Aptos High School varsity football team has reached the CCS tournament in seven of the last 10 years.
Four of those years finished in a game against St. Ignatius. The first three marked the end of the Mariners’ run in the tournament. This last one ended in a CCS championship.
Aptos’ 41-35 victory over the Wildcats on Friday, Dec. 6, earned the school its second CCS football title.
“This has been an incredible journey,” said coach Randy Blankenship. “This is what we’ve worked for all year.”
Blankenship took over in 2010 and has kept the Mariners near or at the top of the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League ever since, tying for second in his first year and winning three-straight league titles since.
The team’s CCS performance has also improved each year. After a first-round blowout against Terra Nova in 2010, Aptos came within a touchdown of moving past St. Ignatius in 2011. Last year, the Mariners reached the CCS final for the first time since 2003, losing in the title game to Valley Christian.
“We’ve grown so much the last year,” senior quarterback Alex Joh said. “That is, by far, the best game I’ve ever played in my life. It feels amazing. It’s the best feeling I’ve ever felt.”
Joh, one of the many seniors who started their journey in Blankenship’s new program, knew what this meant to their coach.
“This means the world to him, to all of us,” he said. “He puts so much of himself into this team every year. He cares about all of us.”
The Mariners and St. Ignatius traded scores all night and the game was a nail-biter — although with just under four minutes to go, it looked like Aptos had put the game away.
Junior Louie Demicell scored on a 17-yard run with 3:51 left in the game to give the Mariners a 41-21 lead. The fans and the sidelines exploded with excitement. But St. Ignatius was not ready to go quietly.
The Wildcats drove down the field methodically and confidently, scoring on a four-yard run by Elijah Dale with 1:30 left. St. Ignatius then recovered the ensuing on-side kick and scored again one minute later to pull within a touchdown of Aptos.
With under 25 seconds left, St. Ignatius recovered it’s second-straight on-side kick, leaving the Mariners fans holding their breath — a breath that turned into a collective roar when Dalton Weitzel picked off quarterback Ryan Hagfeldt for the second time, setting a school record with his 10th of the season and denying St. Ignatius its third straight CCS title.
“We knew someone on defense would make the play,” Weitzel said.
Aptos got on the board first, scoring on the team’s third offensive play when Brooks Nicholson took a swing pass from Joh 78 yards for a touchdown.
The teams traded scores the rest of the half. The Wildcats’ Dale scoring his first of four touchdowns on a 9-yard run, followed by the Mariners’ Kyle Marks’ 12-yard run early in the second quarter.
The blocked kick on Marks’ touchdown meant that Dale’s second touchdown with 5-mintues left put the Wildcats up by one, but Aptos took the lead for good when Charlie Mehl caught a 24-yard pass from Joh with 18 seconds left in the first half.
Aptos started the second half with the ball and opened up second-half scoring when Austen Verdugo caught a pass over the middle and raced 46 yards to give the Mariners a 2-touchdown lead.
Dale scored his third touchdown for the Wildcats late in the third quarter and the Mariners answered, opening the fourth quarter with Ben Romero’s 25-yard catch in corner of the end zone, Joh’s fourth TD pass of the game. Demicell’s touchdown run then set up the final-minute dramatics.
“This has been a wonderful year,” Blankenship said. “The kids have worked so hard to get to this moment. This is what they play for.”
