St. Ignatius Defeats New Trier in Cross-Border Clash
St. Ignatius Defeats New Trier in Cross-Border Clash
Saint Ignatius of Cleveland followed up their strong opening weekend with a well-taken win over Illinois-based New Trier Sunday.
The game was payed at Triny University in Angola, Ind. and followed on Saturday's New Trier vs Pendleton game which the Illinois side won 17-15. This trip for New Trier was designed to be this challenging as a way to try to replicate the pressure of the HS National Championships. They had no illusions that Ignatius, which defeated Pendleton last week, would be a stern test.
The wind was a big factor in the game. The opening kickoff from New Trier went right into the try zone where Ignatius touched it down. This gave St Ignatius a scrum at the 50 right from the jump.
After some very tough runs that got Ignatius near the goalline, center Colin Spellacy scored the try. Some messy play from both teams led to James Coughlin getting a long run down the sideline, but the New Trier cover defense was there to take him into touch. The momentum was quickly turned back over to St. Ignatius in the lineout. St Ignatius was knocking on the door once again, but New Trier defended well and forced a turnover.
Eventually, however, Ignatius got the ball back and were back to the New Tier goalline. Scrumhalf Mark French scored on a sneaky pick-and-go (and dummy). The conversion was missed again but that was the last time they did that.
This game was very physical with Jayden Salinger From New Trier leading the collisions and St. Ignatius forward Connor Bender doing the same. Ignatius did well to keep possession of the ball and this led to Coughlin racing in for a try on the edge. With Chris Haney's conversion it was 17-0.
Saint Ignatius's goalline offense was clinical and this led to flanker Bryce Comeau crashing over. The first half ended with New Trier holding possession for a long period but they were unable to capitalize.
Starting the second half Ignatius front-rower Jack Stefan was in excellent position for a pick-and-go, supported by his forward mates. With Levi Hoffman's kick, that made it 32-0.
Jayden Salinger was trouble for the Ignatius defense as he put New Trier in prime scoring opportunity. New Trier capitalized and scored in the corner to make it 32-5.
No time was wasted off the restart, Tommy Passerallo raced in under the kick and caught it on the fly before evading a tackle and running in to score. That immediately took the momentum from New Trier.
Followed by many mistakes by both teams and many exchanges of possession, Keegan Forkapa scored for Ignatius, which made it 45-0 with Hoffman's conversion (he hit five on the day) St. Ignatius was not done there as Passerallo picked up a loose ball and went the distance. That finished it off at 52-5.
Ignatius were led by Bender and Jacob Papesh in handling a very physical New Trier pack.
Ignatius Head Coach Dan Arbeznik was pleased, but not overly so.
"It didn't feel like a complete game," he said, adding that while the score was better than their 35-8 win over Pendleton last week, they missed all their conversions in that match—it was seven tries to one last week, and eight tries to one this week. "We are aware that Pendleton played these guys last night, so credit to New Trier for playing two games in two days. They were missing players and and they had less than 24 hours to recover. I think we tackled pretty well in the first 20 minutes and after that we started soaking more tackles than we should."
—Preston Bucsanyi
