By Frank Steele
MaxPreps.com
Sacred Heart-Griffin won the adidas 7-on-7 Notre Dame Regional Football Tournament on Saturday in South Bend, Ind., beating Jacksonville, 40-12, at Notre Dame Stadium to advance to the national tournament July 30-31 in Atlanta.
The Central State Eight rivals each went 8-0 over two days at the adidas 7-on-7 event, earning their right to play for the large-school championship of the 49-team tournament.
Sacred Heart, which competed for the fourth time in the tournament, won its first title. Jacksonville was entered for the first time.
Jacksonville finished its weekend with an 8-1 record. Sacred Heart-Griffin (9-0) advances to Atlanta next month. SHG's John Lantz, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound wide receiver, was named MVP.
“The kids played very well,” Jacksonville coach Mark Grounds told the Jacksonville Courier. “We would have liked to have had the last one, though. SHG made a couple more plays than we did and that was the difference in it.”
Still, the two Central State Eight teams from about fifteen miles apart enjoyed the prestige of being two of the only schools to play inside Notre Dame Stadium this weekend. Two teams from the small school bracket also played their championship game on the field. The winner was Concord High of Indiana.
“We kept looking at the bracket and saying 'what if we meet up against Jacksonville?'" said coach Ken Leonard of Sacred Heart-Griffin. "This says a lot for the CS8 Conference. Both teams are going to remember this for the rest of their lives."
The tournament featured more than 40 schools from the Midwest, with the final eight including two teams from SHG and one each from Jacksonville, Elkhart (Ind.), Concord, Greensburg (Pa.), LaPorte (Ind.), Lowell (Ind.), and South Bend (Ind.) St. Joseph.
Jacksonville went 5-0 in Friday’s seeding round. On Saturday, the Crimsons kept it up, defeating Garrett, Ind., for a second time, 34-24, then getting past Cathedral Prep (Pa.) Academy, 27-20, in the quarterfinals before outlasting LaPorte, Ind., 28-23, in the semis to advance to the championship game against SHG.
“A lot of people follow Notre Dame football and even dream of playing in that stadium one day,” said Grounds. “We had 18 kids who had the opportunity to do that.”
The Crimsons looked sharp all weekend, but SHG, they said, looked spectacular.
“Oh, they’re SHG,” said Jacob Mills of Jacksonville. “They’re always going to be good. It was a great thing for the CS8. Two teams from our conference went a combined 10-0 on the first day and wound up meeting for the championship.”
Said Blake Schnitker of Jacksonville, “they looked like typical, championship-mode SHG. They were doing what they do, spreading you out and getting rid of (the ball) quickly. Then next thing you knew, they were hitting you deep. Also they had the best defense that we saw the whole camp.”
“Who would have thought we would drive six hours to play them, but that says something about the conference,” Leonard said. “After the game, both sides and staff appreciated the fact that the Central State Eight Conference had the last teams standing.”
