By Dylan Butler
With the St. Francis Prep football team trailing Stepinac 12-0 late in the first half, small droplets of rain began to cascade from the sky above St. John’s University Sunday. And as the rain and wind picked up its intensity towards halftime, Terriers senior Chris Zambrano couldn’t be happier.
“This is my weather,” he proclaimed.
St. Francis Prep certainly seemed to be re-energized by the change in weather. After playing an admittedly flat first half, the Terriers went on an 11-play, 58-yard drive capped by Zambrano’s five-yard touchdown run to cut the Crusaders lead to 12-7. Zambrano scored three more touchdowns, forced a fumble that led to another touchdown and recovered a fumble to lead St. Francis Prep to a 33-18 come-from-behind victory.
“We had a great week of practice and, as usual, we came out flat,” Zambrano said. “All of a sudden we came to life with that long drive at the end of the second quarter. That’s what did it.”
While that drive gave St. Francis Prep (1-2, 1-1 CHSFL) a much-needed shot of adrenaline, a half-time adjustment helped give the Terriers their first lead on the first play of the second half.
Terriers head coach Vince O’Connor and his staff decided to move Zambrano from defensive end to nose tackle at the start of the third quarter. The change paid immediate dividends, as Zambrano pushed the Stepinac center into quarterback Jon Tallerico, who lost the ball. St. Francis Prep senior strong safety Martin Connelly recovered the ball and ran it in for a 34-yard touchdown to give Prep its first lead of the game, 13-12, 23 seconds into the second half.
“I guess I was in the right spot at the right time,” Connelly said. “I just picked it up. That was a turning point for us.”
St. Francis Prep went ahead 20-12 with 5:35 left in the third quarter as Zambrano twisted and turned his way into the end zone from two-yards out, but Stepinac (1-1, 1-1 CHSFL) answered right back as Tallerico connected with Tyler Nugent on a 15-yard touchdown pass. The Crusaders went for the potential tying two-point conversion, but Richard Magliore stopped Tallerico, as the Terriers led 20-18 with 2:22 remaining in the third quarter.
Clinging to a two-point lead with just over six minutes left in the fourth quarter, O’Connor again went to his horse Zambrano, who carried the ball 21 times for 122 yards. Zambrano didn’t disappoint, scoring on a two-yard burst up the middle to put St. Francis Prep ahead, 26-18.
“He’s a strong, tough runner,” O’Connor said of Zambrano, who scored one less touchdown Sunday than he did in the entire 2000 season. “We know he’s going to be a factor in a game like this because he runs tough, blocks well and is a solid two-way player.”
Zambrano was not done yet, as he recovered a fumble on Stepinac’s next play from scrimmage — the Crusaders sixth turnover of the game — and four plays later scored his fourth touchdown of the day on a four-yard run up the middle to put the Terriers ahead 33-18 with 4:28 left in the game.
Early on, it looked like it would be a Stepinac blowout, as Griffin Nugent ran back the opening kickoff for an 86-yard score and on a 16-yard touchdown run by Frank Scuderi, putting the Crusaders ahead 12-0 with 7:17 left in the half. But as the weather changed, so did Stepinac’s luck with the football.
“We had six turnovers today and you can’t do that against a team like St. Francis Prep,” said Stepinac head coach Mike O’Connell. “We started real well, but I think their score before halftime changed the game,. That and the first two plays of the second half deflated our confidence.”
The win was an important one for St. Francis Prep, which lost a pair of tough games to open the season and have to travel to play the St. Anthony’s Friday at 7 p.m. It was also an unusual one for the Terriers, who are not known for their offensive prowess. It was the first time in recent memory St. Francis Prep, a team that scored 115 points all of last year, scored more than 30 points in one game.
“We’re not used to scoring 30, but we can do even better,” Zambrano said. “Going into the game we knew we had to win if we wanted to get into the ‘AAA’. We still have to play Monsignor Farrell and St. Anthony’s, so we really needed this one.”
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 143.
