Mary Star Beats Daniel Murphy to Win Santa Fe League Title

Mary Star High spent much of Thursday night giving up penalty yardage, but the Stars emerged with a Santa Fe League championship.

Mary Star’s blue-collar 33-14 victory over visiting Daniel Murphy at Daniels Field in San Pedro clinched the school’s first league title since 1978 and capped the Stars’ first unbeaten league season since 1959.

Mary Star (7-3 overall and 5-0 in league play) will enter next week’s playoffs as the Santa Fe League’s No. 1 representative.

Mary Star Coach Mike Marinkovich, a sophomore lineman on the 1978 team, was at a loss to explain the penalties. The Stars were flagged five times for personal fouls.

“Every time we had a big play, it seemed we also had a big penalty,” Marinkovich said. “I’m not saying we weren’t guilty on all of them, but the kids were saying they weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. But it seemed every time the referee took something away from us, we’d come up with a big play to get it back.”

Penalties or not, Mary Star was dominant throughout, especially in the running game. Halfbacks Matt Redlew and Vince Orlando each carried 19 times--with Redlew running for 126 yards and Orlando 124.

The pair also accounted for all of Mary Star’s touchdowns. Redlew scored on runs of eight, 16 and 25 yards and Orlando added scoring runs of two and eight yards.

Sophomore tailback Luis Williams led Murphy (3-7, 2-3) with 140 yards on 13 carries. Williams scored Murphy’s first TD on a two-yard run in the second quarter and the Nobles added another score on a seven-yard pass from Hans Velasco to Rafael Martinez in the fourth.