By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

A group of tearful St. Charles seniors emerged from the visitor’s locker room at Joe Yenni Stadium on Friday night, walking through a blustery, rainy, frigid night to return to their team buses.

No one had ever accused this Comet bunch of rolling over before. And nobody would dream to start after the effort they put forward on this night.

But John Curtis would nonetheless be rolling on, 27-0 winners for the second time this season over the Comets, and securing their place in the Superdome with a victory in a Class 2A semifinal game.

“There was a lot of character this season in our locker room,” said St. Charles coach Frank Monica. “There were a lot of tears tonight, and rightfully so. They gave us a lot of heart.”

The top-seeded Patriots move on to the Class 2A championship game on Friday night to face Evangel. Curtis will be gunning for its 24th state championship.

The story of the second meeting between the Patriots (13-0) and Comets (12-2) – the first was a 19-18 Curtis victory in a classic game – was how each team responded to the harsh elements.

While both teams had played in the cold and rain before, the wind was most damaging of all.

“We’ve played in the cold, and in the rain, but never like this,” said Curtis coach J.T. Curtis. “It was disadvantageous to St. Charles. They like to throw more than we do, and the conditions were just not conducive to doing that. It was unfortunate that we had to play in conditions like this.”

Indeed, the bigger, stronger Patriots were more than happy to rely on their ground attack, rushing for over 250 yards, led by Torrey Pierce’s 183 yards and three touchdowns.

St. Charles couldn’t use their passing attack to keep up. Henri Faucheux completed 3-of-20 pass attempts for 62 yards and two interceptions.

The Comets couldn’t muster a sustained drive. Its best chance to score came after a 50-yard Jeffrey Hall run early in the second half, when he set SCC up at the Curtis 35. But Curtis’ defense held firm and stopped the Comets in four plays.

“I can’t say enough about our defense,” Curtis said.

Said Monica: “I didn’t do a good enough job preparing our offense to move the ball tonight. I should have had a rainy day plan. I felt that on a turf field like this, we would have been able to still throw with some success. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.”

Still, St. Charles had opportunities to get out ahead. Grant Authement intercepted Curtis quarterback Bryce Jenkins on the Patriots’ first possession and set up the Comets inside JCC territory. Curtis’ second possession ended with a four-yard punt, again setting the Comets up in good field position.

But on neither occasion could SCC bust through.

“Our defense created some opportunities that we couldn’t take advantage of on offense,” said Monica. “The defense played their hearts out.”

Curtis cashed in on its third possession, when Quincy Scott broke loose down the left sideline on a 51-yard touchdown run with 16 seconds left in the first quarter.

“We felt that if we just kept running, our backs are good enough to eventually break away,” said Curtis.

The Patriots added to the lead with 31 seconds left in the half, when Pierce rolled into the endzone from nine yards away to cap a six play, 38-yard drive that followed a Comets punt.

“The weather the way it was, you couldn’t reverse field position on special teams,” said Monica.

Curtis looked to put the game away on a long drive in the third quarter, but SCC recovered a fumble at its own 21 to live to fight again.

The Comets offense got a spark on a third-and-eight play when Faucheux found Brandon Becker for a 26-yard gain to the Comet 44. But two plays later, JCC’s Seth Jones intercepted Faucheux on an attempted screen to Hall, ending the threat.

JCC added two more scores in the last 5:06 of play, on 40 and 20-yard Pierce runs.

“To win 12 games against our schedule was tremendous,” said Monica of his team. “This group of seniors was exemplary. They earned a lot of victories for St. Charles over the past four to five years.”