MOUNTAIN VIEW — After marching his team down the field for a game-winning touchdown with 19 seconds left Friday night, St. Francis quarterback Andrew Franzino was asked if he identified with the word clutch. Another adjective came to his mind: resilient.
Given the ball back with 6:18 to play and down five points, the senior completed five of six passes on a surgical scoring drive that ended with junior running back Motu Keanaaina barreling across the goal line from a yard out to seal a 20-19 win over Archbishop Mitty.
The Lancers (2-4, 2-1) rallied from a 13-0 first-quarter hole to claim their second straight win in West Catholic Athletic League play after starting the season 0-4 against a brutal non-conference schedule. Afterward, both offensive stars were nursing injuries.
“We’re resilient,” said Franzino, who needed to be helped off the field after he was tackled out of bounds going for 2 on the go-ahead score. “We’re a really gritty team. Stuff goes bad and we’re still going to be strong and stay together. I love that about this team. We’re all warriors. We preach on that. If it’s not broken, no blood, we’re gonna play.”
Franzino expects to play through the hyperextended right knee, which he had wrapped in ice, just as Keanaaina has through ankle troubles that have bothered him the past three weeks. The ailment briefly forced him to the sideline in the second half, but he returned to finish with a game-high 130 yards on 20 carries.
The outcome felt inevitable when the junior running back had four chances to score from the 1-yard line. It only took one. Things were less assured when the drive began at their own 20-yard line, when they faced third-and-23 around midfield and then a fourth-and-3 with less than a minute to go.
“It felt good because we don’t have to worry no more,” Keanaaina said of his emotions crossing the goal line. “It’s a great feeling to have. I felt like we shouldn’t have been close. We had everything to win, but (there were) those mistakes that happened.”
St. Francis committed 11 penalties totaling more than 100 yards, including two on its final scoring drive. They gave the Monarchs a fresh set of downs when they were punting from their own end zone by roughing the kicker. As time expired, a 58-yard field goal attempt from Mitty’s kicker fell about 10 yards short, a last-gasp opportunity to win the game granted by a late hit out of bounds as its quarterback escaped a sack.
“We’ve got to be better, and we know we’ve got to be better,” coach Greg Calcagno said. “We continue to work on it. If we figure it out, we could be pretty dangerous.”
The Monarchs (4-2, 2-1) raced out to a 13-0 lead midway through the first quarter behind senior running back Lazaro Faraj-Washington, who broke off a 38-yard gain on his first carry, and senior quarterback Joseph Engin, who completed his first eight passes, including a pair of touchdowns.
They were primed to extend the lead before halftime, driving in the red zone with under 2 minutes to go, when Faraj-Washington was tackled for a loss on third down and, rather than attempt a field goal, Engin threw incomplete into the end zone on fourth down.
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Franzino got the ball back at his own 13 with 1:42 until intermission and mounted a scoring drive that gave the Lancers a 14-13 lead at the half, connecting with senior receiver Max Haberlach on a 31-yard strike with 12 seconds on the clock.
“That was big, and now we get the ball coming out of half and we’re up,” Calcagno said. “The plan was to actually get some first downs early and get some things going, but that didn’t work out so good.”
The touchdown going into halftime was the last score until Faraj-Washington put Mitty up 19-14 with 6:18 to play. Coach Danny Sullivan went deep into his playbook for an attempted 2-point conversion that resulted in a wide-open receiver in the end zone, but a jump pass from his running back was off-target.
That put the ball back in the hands of Franzino, who had one other word to describe himself.
“I consider myself a baller, I’m a gamer,” he said. “When the game’s going strong, or it looks a little uneven, I’m gonna go out there and I’m gonna give it my all. That’s all it is.”
“Andrew did a great job getting us down there for a great drive at the end when we needed it,” Calcagno said. “He’s an elected captain, and he showed it tonight.”