St. Thomas More is back on top in Grade 8 football, winning its unprecedented 13th Quadra Cup at B.C. Place.
The Burnaby independent bantam boys led from start to finish, vanquishing the three-time provincial champion Tweedsmuir Panthers 20-12 in the Grade 8 final on Saturday.
Nico De Paoli rushed for more than 150 yards and three touchdowns to lead the first-year Knights to their first B.C. banner in six seasons and first Tier 1 title ever.
“In the final couple of minutes everyone was going crazy. But we held our heads up high, and that’s what pushed us ahead today,” said De Paoli, who had scores of five, 10 and 55 yards in the win.
The long-gainer came off a fumbled snap, which De Paoli picked up in the backfield and raced down the sidelines to put STM up 14-6 with no time left in the third quarter.
Tweedsmuir responded on the first play of the final quarter with a 61-yard TD run by quarterback Walter Dingwall off a well executed fake.
STM’s defence stopped the two-point conversion attempt on the goalline to remain ahead 14-12.
De Paoli, the workhorse of the Knights’ rushing game, capped a long, time-consuming drive with a five-yard run up the middle to increase the lead to eight points late in the game.
In the second half, no less than six Panther players needed to be helped off the field after contact with the Knights, which spoke volumes of the Knights’ heart and pluck.
“No one does two-a-days, no one runs as hard as we do and conditions as hard as we do,” De Paoli said. “We’re all bantam brothers. We’re all together.”
And the Knights needed that togetherness, in a game that played witness to numerous mishandled balls in the STM backfield.
“We knew our 7 a.m. (practices) would pay off,” said STM head coach Vince Flamia. “They’ve changed the league a little bit, but you had to beat teams three times to get here.”
A 7-0 semifinal win over Holy Cross was a huge wake-up call for the boys, Flamia said, adding the character of his first-year teens was something else again.
“(De Paoli) came up to me (after he fumbled a snap in the third quarter) and said ‘Give me the ball. Let me carry this out.’ That’s character,” said Flamia.
A big quarter-back sack by Tyler Eckert, who had been slowed up by the flu earlier in the week, was another example of the boys’ total commitment.
That fourth-down sack stopped a late Tweedsmuir drive on downs in the final minute of play, allowing STM to play out the rest of the clock.
STM won its first Quadra Cup back in 1989, before dominating the division for more than a decade, winning 11 provincial titles in 12 seasons under Darrell Hall, including 10 straight from 1998 to 2007.
“We’re trying to turn things around here,” Flamia said.
“It’s an STM family. They play for five years, so that means that we did our job.”
