By Vincent Liu

Town Crier Correspondent

So close and yet so far. The St. Francis High football team came within a dropped touchdown pass, a bad punt and an interception of pulling off one of the greatest upsets in high school sports history - football or otherwise.

Coming off a big win in Honolulu under the national spotlight, visiting De La Salle (3-0) showed up flat and almost got ambushed by a band of fired-up Lancers (1-2) last Friday night.

In the end, the nation’s top-ranked team from Concord escaped with a 14-0 victory that extended its national-record winning streak to 128 games.

St. Francis head coach Mike Mitchell hatched a ball-control scheme to keep the football on the ground and away from De La Salle’s high-power offense, which played without All-America running back Maurice Drew (ankle injury).

“We wanted to shrink the game in the first half and keep it close to give us a chance in the second half,” Mitchell said.

His players worked the scheme to near perfection.

St. Francis ran the ball on its first 19 plays in the first half and did not throw its first pass until it fell behind 7-0 with 4:12 minutes left in the second quarter.

The game’s first touchdown was set up by a woeful 14-yard punt that gave the Spartans possession at St. Francis’ 34-yard line. De La Salle scored four plays later.

After completing his first two passes, Lancers quarterback Kyle Spraker drove his team to De La Salle’s 33.

Then came the pivotal play of the game.

With third-and-10 and 33 seconds left in the first half, Spraker spotted wide receiver Ryan Lee streaking down the sideline and led him perfectly with a spiral into the right corner of the end zone for an apparent game-tying touchdown. As the ball was in full flight, Mitchell at the sideline was already signaling TD and planning his extra-point conversion.

But the pass was dropped. The winning streak was safe - at least for another week.

A subsequent 50-yard field goal try fell short and St. Francis did not threaten again until midway through the fourth quarter when it recovered a muffed punt at the opponent’s 30, trailing 14-0.

On the next play, a poorly thrown halfback option pass was intercepted. That, for all intents and purposes, was the ball game.

Any notion of a miracle upset was laid to rest early in the third quarter when De La Salle running back Justin Bates ripped off a 57-yard run to the Lancers’ 12-yard line. Two plays later, the Spartans scored.

Forced to take to the air, Spraker was under heavy pressure and sacked five times in the second half. Nevertheless, the junior signal-caller completed 8 of 14 passes, five for first downs, and was cool under duress.

Despite the loss, the Lancers held a decisive edge in the possession statistics. For the game, they racked up a total of 68 plays to the Spartans, 37.

More remarkably, they enjoyed a huge advantage in time of possession by eating up 35:12 of a total of 48 minutes on the clock.

Such ball-control dominance can be attributed to the bruising running by fullback William Taufoou and halfback Dan Descalso, and to a gang-tackling defense that limited De La Salle’s potent offense to 250 total yards.

In fact, the 14 points reportedly represents the fewest points scored by the Spartans during their streak. Interestingly enough, their previous low of 21 points also came against the Lancers in 1998.

Still, the game would never have been this close if De La Salle had not played Santa Claus. It fumbled the ball four times in the first half, losing two of them deep in St. Francis territory. The Spartans also muffed a punt in the fourth quarter resulting in another turnover.

Judging by the reaction of the coaches, one would have a hard time figuring out who won the game.

A subdued and visibly relieved Bob Ladouceur, head coach of De La Salle, felt that his team was tired and suffered a letdown after the return trip from Honolulu. He also gave credit to his counterpart.

“Mike did a great job prepping his players for this game, and his team always played us tough.”

Mitchell on the other hand was downright upbeat, an attitude shared by his team in the locker room after the game.

“My players were sky high at practice last night, and they did not behave like they have lost tonight,” he said. “This is a moral victory for us against a great team.”

In nine previous games against De La Salle, St. Francis won once. That was back in 1989, two years before the Spartans started their incredible winning streak.

Mitchell said he would like to renew the two-year home-to-home series against the Spartans “as long as we’re competitive with them.”

Judging by the latest contest, look for the series to continue.