The Classical Academy’s tornadic defense blew away Mountain View in the Class 4A flag football championship game Saturday afternoon.
Sacks, interceptions and unrelenting pressure lifted the Titans to a 34-0 victory at Trailblazer Stadium.
TCA avenged last season’s 26-0 loss to Mountain View in the championship game. That defeat provided a year’s worth of incentive.
“Ever since last year, and the game (earlier) this year, this has been a big deal for us,” said junior linebacker/wide receiver Brooklyn Blair, who picked off three passes and changed the game’s tenor with a burst of dynamic plays in the second quarter.
The Titans and Mountain Lions hooked up in Week 2 this season, with TCA winning 39-32 in triple overtime. Saturday’s game had none of that white-knuckle drama because the Titans overwhelmed the Mountain Lions for nearly the entire game.
“We wanted our defense to pressure their quarterback and make her make mistakes,” coach Dale Meyerrose said. “But they are familiar with us, and we are familiar with them. We basically knew what their offensive scheme was, and they knew what ours was. It was just a matter of us executing.”
The Titans won five consecutive games to close out their season with a 16-3 record. Mountain View also finished 16-3.
For about 4 minutes in the second quarter, Blair put on a show, boosting TCA to a 21-0 halftime lead.
First, she flew into the middle of a pack to intercept Keira Knowles’ pass at the 14-yard line and turn it into a pick-six and a 14-0 Titans lead.
After Mountain View was forced to punt on the next possession, Blair caught the punt in mid-stride and returned it 35 yards to the Mountain View 5-yard line. Two plays later, junior quarterback Kelsey Peterson connected with junior Ryann Ferguson for a 3-yard TD pass and a three-TD lead.
Asked how it felt to be the sparkplug in a championship game, Blair laughed and said, “I don’t know about that. Really. I was just playing for the team today. The fact that I did that was awesome.”
TCA took a 7-0 lead midway through the first quarter on a 5-yard pass from Peterson to sophomore Reagan Harter. The Titans were driving again until Mountain View senior Jesika Hopkins picked off a pass and returned it 17 yards.
But the Titans’ defense never bent. A blocked pass by senior Whitney Meister, followed by a 5-yard sack by sophomore Lauren Pantusa, put the Titans in prime scoring position. But on a fourth-and-goal play from the 1-yard line, Peterson’s pass fell incomplete.
Enter Blair, who turned in her pick-six two plays later.
“She is a very talented athlete, and she is aggressive to the ball,” Meyerrose said. “She plays both offense and defense and plays both just extremely well.”
Peterson, who began playing quarterback as a sophomore last year, led her team with poise, even if the offense stalled a bit early in the game.
“I’ve grown a lot and I’m a lot more confident in myself,” she said. “I know how to rebound from mistakes better. Today, when I threw that first interception, I was able to bounce back. And I had a lot of my teammates supporting me and picking up the team.”
In the second half, Peterson threw a 5-yard strike to Ferguson to extend the Titans’ lead to 27-0. She ran the ball in from the 12-yard line for the game’s final score. That score was set up by Blair’s second interception of the game.
“Kelsey throws a nice ball,” Meyerrose said of his QB. “But more than that, she knows how to hold her team together. So when we have been down this season, she has been able to say, ‘OK, we’ve got this.’ She showed that again today.”
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