ATHERTON — When you walk around Atherton, it’s not often that you’ll run into a bear. Much less a entire pack of them.
But that’s exactly what Sacred Heart Prep found itself up against on Saturday afternoon at its home field. These Bears were physical, balanced and executed plays up and down the field.
They came from Summerville, and if you haven’t heard of it, you should know it now. The Bears traveled 140 miles from Tuolumne, a small town near Yosemite National Park, and handled Sacred Heart Prep 45-28 in the CIF NorCal 6-A championship game.
“The mentality was bring Tuolumne tough, bring some foothills toughness down,” Summerville coach Sean Leveroos said. “That was the game plan.”
The Bears (13-1) brought their trademark grit to Atherton all game, but it was actually SHP (7-7) that struck first. After getting a stop on their first defensive possession, the Gators got the ball back and scored within four plays.
Sasha Bamdad’s 46-yard run on a jet sweep set SHP up in the red zone, and Maxime Morelle finished off the drive with an 18-yard TD run around the left side.
Not much went right after that for the Gators. Summerville responded with a TD two drives later, as quarterback Bryce Leveroos ran in a 1-yard score.
It was pretty much downhill from there for the Bears. Leveroos tossed a 13-yard touchdown to Luke Larson, then ran in a 5-yard TD right before the half to give Summerville a 21-7 lead.
“I take my hat off to Summerville,” SHP coach Mark Grieb said. “They came in with a great plan. Their coaches do a great job. Their team is a good football team.”
The Bears kept rolling in the second half, stopping the Gators on the first possession of the half and getting the ball back for Leveroos, who scored his fourth touchdown of the game on a 3-yard run.
“He doesn’t get it done without his teammates and his line,” said coach Leveroos, Bryce’s father. “And his team blocks really well for him. He has great vision. He gets small when he needs to get small, he runs behind his pads really well.”
SHP answered with an eight-play drive that ended with a 9-yard touchdown run by Bamdad on another sweep, bringing the score to 28-13.
But the Gators still couldn’t stop Leveroos. To cap a lengthy drive that spanned the end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth, the man of the hour ran in his fifth total TD of the game on a fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line.
“He’s a little brother, so he’s been picked on a lot,” coach Leveroos said of Bryce’s toughness.
SHP responded in the fourth thanks to a creative play call by Grieb. On the first play of the next drive, quarterback Nico Pollioni tossed a backward pass to Jack Barton, who found McKinley Palmer wide open down the sideline for a 63-yard TD throw.
Yet again, Summerville had an answer in the form of Leveroos. The junior QB capped a quick four-play drive with his third consecutive run, this time a 3-yard score. It was his sixth overall touchdown of the game.
“They deserve the credit for their preparation and their effort today,” Grieb said.
The Gators weren’t done fighting either. On a very similar play, Pollioni handed the ball off to Wyatt Staley, who found Palmer once again down the near sideline for a 58-yard passing TD. That score brought the Gators within two possessions at 42-28.
“We have a resilient bunch,” Grieb said. “I challenged them at halftime. There were some things that obviously didn’t go right for us in the first half, and I thought they responded with a great effort in the second half.”
Summerville sealed the win with a 24-yard field goal by Bryson Benites that made it a three-score game with 4:12 remaining.
SHP nearly scored at the end to make it a closer game cosmetically, but the action threatened to get out of hand. With less than a minute to go, Pollioni looked for Elliot Spieker with a pass over the middle, but it was broken up by Leveroos with a big hit at safety.
Some extra physicality after the play resulted in a brief stoppage to gain control of the game, which momentarily devolved into a melee between the teams.
At several points during the game and after the final whistle blew, Grieb was visibly unhappy with how the game was managed.
“I thought the game got out of control,” he said.
Despite the loss, Sacred Heart Prep still very much had a season to remember, reversing its fortunes after a 4-6 start with three consecutive wins to earn a CCS Division IV championship last Saturday in San Jose.
“Just a resilient bunch,” Grieb said. “They fought. So tough. You can point out this flaw or that flaw. And we definitely had areas that we had flaws in, like every team, I guess. But they were so close. They came together and they loved playing, and they loved playing with each other. They wanted to keep doing it, and I think that showed in the postseason.”
