Firebirds Just a Warmup for Chaminade Football

For those of you that happen to have siblings, remember how you used to tell them that you were bigger, older and could do things that they couldn’t do? How you could literally keep them at arm’s length as they tried to tackle you, holding them off with a strategically placed palm on their forehead as they ran themselves into the ground in vein Wile E. Coyote style?

Remember then how shocking it was then that first time they were able to actually get an anklehold? How stunning it was that first time they beat you? How your previously unblemished, undefeated and untied record now had that lone, singular one in the right-hand column?

It didn’t feel good, did it?

The players on the varsity football roster felt the same a couple of years ago, watching Kellenberg trott off their field with to start the 2010 season, the first time in the history of the two schools it happened.

You tend to do a lot of soul-searching after your little brother just walks off after showing you up on your home turf and upsetting the natural balance of things in some sort of twisted medieval plot twist.

What exactly went on in the Flyer locker room after that game, only Joe Anile and the other then-sophomore members of the team know for sure, but it had a year to stew about, a year to put new things together and set what Chaminade saw as the , with Kellenberg below them on the scoreboard and in the standings.

What followed on Saturday was a continuation of that; no less a systematic dismantling of the Firebirds by the Flyers than the Jets did against Buffalo the next day, putting up 35 while holding Kellenberg to a single touchdown. What happened was a supporting homecrowd so numerous that they had to annex most of the visiting bleachers to contain the crowd. What happened was Anile using the assets he had in his RBs Matthew Correa, Robert Sporanza, and Daniel Fowler who jammed it into the endzone twice in the second half to blow it wide open before Chris Gallic put it away in the fourth.

What happened was a Kellenberg offense stymied until the fourth quarter when they called upon Anthony Nopolitano, who had been recovering from a broken arm, to get their seized lines moving and get on the board at all.

What happened was what it was supposed to be: the JV looking like the junior squad and the varsity looking like itself again. Hand on the little brother’s forehead and all.