Two of the top single-school boys HS teams meet up Saturday when Gonzaga takes on Xavier.

Xavier is fresh off a tour to California where they played some stiff SoCal opposition plus New Plymouth out of New Zealand.

Gonzaga is fresh off winning the Jesuit Classic.

“The tour was excellent,” said Xavier Coach Joe Sweeney. “Although after this winter - when we had games cancelled for snow as late as March 21 - the boys weren't sure of what to make of all the sunshine and warm weather in San Diego.  The whole team tried surfing for the first time and had a great experience on the ropes course at UCSD. you learn a lot about your teammates' courage and commitment to you when your crossing a tightrope arm-in-arm 50 feet above the ground.”

They also won games, with their B-side beating Try-City and Poway, and their As beating the San Diego Mustangs 69-17 and losing 45-5 to New Plymouth.

“[New Plymouth] knew how to exploit small cracks in our defense for a lot of points,” said Sweeney.  “Finding out where we were deficient is exactly what we needed from that match and this week was all spent on shoring up defensive mistakes, perfecting our set pieces and working on capitalizing on our line breaks. We could have scored three more tries had we been more clinical inside New Plymouth's 5-meter line.”

Gonzaga was pleased with their effort in the set pieces over the course of the Jesuit Classic weekend. Their ability to steal ball in the scrums and lineouts from finalists Greenwich was impressive, and they were pretty good at stealing ball in the breakdown, too.

But … “we were our worst enemy with silly mistakes that were uncharacteristic for us,” said Head Coach Peter Baggetta. 

So now they take on Xavier.

“Xavier will be a physical challenge as they always run hard, tackle hard and compete at the tackle contest,” said Baggetta. “I would like to see us be more clinical and do a better job of taking care of the ball in terms of our ball handling - sometimes we get a bit careless with the ball.”

Gonzaga will be without some starters who are on college football orientation. It’s something out of their control and Baggetta says it’s just something he has to deal with.

“The boys are very eager to mix it up with Gonzaga,” said Sweeey. “This is a great rivalry, both for the players and me personally.”

Sweeney was on the Xavier HS team with Gonzaga backs coach Jim Cuddihy back in the 1980s.

“We know they're big in the forwards and have some talent out wide, but we've got a very fit pack who can cause trouble and from 9-13 our guys have great instinct and ball skills,” added Sweeney. “We might be fighting an opponent who's got a bit of weight un us, so we just need to fight hard and box clever.  We've got a team that can do that.”

The B-side game kicks off at 1:30 at Randall's Island, and the A-side game kicks off at 3pm.