OHara 14 St James 13

O’HARA’S HOMECOMING GAME IS A REFLECTION OF THE POWDER PUFF GAME On Friday at O’Hara’s Paul Monteil Stadium, as a part of the Homecoming festivities, the junior and senior girls had their annual powder puff game. Both teams scored two touchdowns with Jackie Kruger and Linda Nwachukwu scoring for the seniors and Ashley Cadenhead and Cameron Randle scoring for the juniors. That evening, in the same setting, the O’Hara Celtics and the Saint James Thunder did the same with Donnie Criswell and TJ White scoring for O’Hara and Jim Getto and Ben Reynoldson scoring for Saint James. The Celtics won 14-13 however when Bryce Scovill kicked both extra points for O’Hara and Christian Mata only made one of two for Saint James. O’Hara had the ball first and fumbled on their second play, giving an indication of the woes they would endure throughout the game. Saint James drove the 37 yards for the first scoring of the game. Jim Getto’s 15 yard pass completion to Christian Mata was the key play in the nine downs it took to score. Getto plunged for the final yard and the Thunder was ahead 7-0. But this wasn’t for long. Starting eighty yards from the goal, the Celtics exploded in five plays to knot the score at 7-7. Donnie Criswell had a run of 30 yards and TJ White passed to James Tillman for 9 yards and to Joe Pepple for 42 yards in the drive. Donnie Criswell delivered the ball to the endzone from the 13 yard line for the tying TD. It was to be the only scoring until the second half of play. Both squads had setbacks. The Thunder defense got a deep sack and the Celtics benefited from a deep over-the-shoulder interception by Danny Hernandez who reversed the ball nearly all the way to the original line of scrimmage. O’Hara got as close as the 11 yard line in spite of several bad snaps, and a wide-open pass caught by Joe Pepple in the endzone that was nullified by a five yard procedure penalty at the line of scrimmage. At halftime, three events relating to Homecoming took place. The O’Hara Dance Team performed, and was followed by the introduction of the Homecoming court, queen and king. Patrice Jackson and Andy Park were the Homecoming Queen and Homecoming King. The letterman club then announced the retirement of the jersey #21 which was used by five outstanding running backs from the same family at O’Hara. Honored were alumni Mike Brown ’81, J. R. Brown ’83, Jeff Brown ’87, and Mark Brown ’93. Saint James received the second half kickoff and eventually gave up the ball on a fumble recovered by Jake Robinson. O’Hara also gave up the ball on an interception by Ben Reynoldson who returned the ball all the way to the 17 yard line. Reynoldson took the ball in to score on two runs but the kick for the extra point missed its mark and the Thunder had only a 13-7 advantage. This advantage did not last long. On the second play following the kickoff, TJ White went 59 yards untouched around the right end for the tying touchdown. Bryce Scovill then put O’Hara ahead for the first time in the game with a successful conversion. At the end of the third quarter, Saint James gambled on a fourth down attempt but came up short. A second interception by Reynoldson brought the ball down to the O’Hara 19 yard line. The Celtic defense did not allow their opponents to get any closer the rest of the game. When the clock showed five and a half minutes left in the game, O’Hara got possession and ran off the remainder of the time with a mixture of short gain plays except for an important 18 yard gain from a TJ White pass to Joe Pepple. Donnie Criswell led the O’Hara runners with 88 yards for an average gain of 9.8 yards per carry. Joe Pepple caught four passes for 78 yards. TJ White upped his total yards career passing to 1729 yards for 4th place in O’Hara history. Ryan McNamara presently holds 3rd place with 1749 yards garnered in 1997-1998. Joe Pepple is the O’Hara all-time career pass receiver with 51 receptions asnd Bryce Scovill is the O’Hara all-time career extra point kicker with 104. He hasn’t missed this year in 17 attempts. Next weekend O’Hara will meet Christ Prep in a Saturday afternoon game with a starting time at 1 PM.