Mater Dei’s Bid for Title Stays Alive

Mater Dei is one game away from fulfilling the goal it set this summer, winning back-to-back Division I football championships.

Having scored a hard-fought, 28-14 victory over La Puente Bishop Amat before am estimated 6,000 at Citrus College, the top-ranked and top-seeded Monarchs (13-0) will play the winner of tonight’s Long Beach Poly-Los Angeles Loyola game next Saturday at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Mater Dei notched its 27th consecutive victory by exploiting three key Lancer turnovers en route to a 28-0 halftime lead, then withstood a second-half Bishop Amat surge and some of their self-destructive urges (seven penalties for 75 yards) to reach the final.

The Monarchs’ Mike McNair rushed for 197 yards and two touchdowns.

Bishop Amat ends it season at 11-2.

“I’m excited to be back in the championship game,” Mater Dei Coach Bruce Rollinson said. “We started talking about the chance to repeat after last year’s championship game and made it a goal. We said we did not want to rest until the 14th of December.

“We’ll get to enjoy this one for about a half-hour. Whoever we play next week will be a giant buzz-saw.”

Mater Dei will now try to win its fourth Division I title this decade and become the first county team ever to win back-to-back county championships. It also hopes to be the first county team to win consecutive Major Division titles since Servite won the Big Five conference championship in 1982 and 1983.

Mater Dei receiver Joey Boese, one of the few players who participated in last year’s 17-10 Division I final victory over Loyola, said the return trip will be sweeter this time “because I’m a senior and you remember everything you do your senior year the rest of your life.”

But the Lancers, missing starting tailback Mike Wagner (hip) and starting quarterback Sean Kolle (shoulder) because of injury, did not go down easily.

Sophomore quarterback Chris Rix--who completed five of 19 passes for 171 yards and confounded the Monarchs with some key third-down scrambles--rallied Bishop Amat to a pair of third-quarter scores on the 60-yard touchdown pass to Dennis Wyrick and a one-yard Wyrick run.

The Lancers ultimately could not overcome their early errors: two interceptions by Rix (one returned for a 46-yard touchdown by Monarch defensive back Alex Romero) and a lost fumble at their 13-yard-line.

Mater Dei turned the three miscues into 21 points.

“The first half, Mater Dei really took it to us,” Lancer Coach Tom Salter said. “I told them in the second half we would find out what we were made of and they showed it.”

The last thing Salter wanted Bishop Amat to be involved with was a scoreboard shootout with Mater Dei.

“We knew we had to score points,” Salter said, “but if comes down to a shootout, they have more weapons than we do.”

But Salter could not predict the mistakes that cost the Lancers. Mater Dei already had a six-point lead thanks to a 48-yard touchdown pass from John Leonard to Boese.

Then came Romero’s big interception.

cos Bad breaks continued to plague Bishop Amat in the second quarter.

Erwin Ubay intercepted a Rix pass at the Monarch 18 and returned the ball to the 37. A 15-yard penalty against the Lancers moved the ball to 48.

Leonard passed 33 yards to Ismael Lopez, setting up a two-yard touchdown run by McNair.

The last fatal error by Bishop Amat came with 1:49 left in the first half when Wyrick fumbled and Mater Dei recovered at the 13. It would take four plays, but McNair finally pushed it into the end zone from three yards.

After Bishop Amat closed to within 28-14 in the third quarter, they tried twice on fourth-down plays to get back in the game. The last attempt came with 2:48 in the game. Mater Dei stopped them both times and ran out the clock.

The last time the two teams met, Mater Dei defeated Bishop Amat, 28-21, in the 1994 Division I final.