Serra overpowers Bellarmine, sets up St. Francis rematch for CCS title

SAN MATEO — Serra’s season-long search for an identity ended Saturday, emphatically and triumphantly, and just in time, too. The Padres had huge plays on special teams. They dominated on defense. They moved the ball plenty on offense and had no turnovers.

And they did it with the staples of coach Patrick Walsh’s program, with energy and enthusiasm.

Facing a Bellarmine team aiming to change the script from a bad October loss on this same field, Serra simply had too much for the Bells, again.

The result was a 41-0 victory for the Padres that sets up a rematch against top-seeded St. Francis for the Central Coast Section Division I championship. Twenty days after the teams’ previous meeting, a 44-21 St. Francis win on Nov. 6 that gave the Lancers the West Catholic Athletic League title, they will meet for the CCS’s top prize at Westmont High on Friday night.

“For me, coaching high school football, a group of boys, is helping them become men and growing as a team,” Walsh said. “I thought today was the first time we’ve seen Padre football all year, to be honest. It’s been a painstaking growth process. But that’s the beauty about coaching high school sports, is having the opportunity of watching boys grow into men.

“The spirit of the Serra Padre shone through today through our effort and enthusiasm. That’s what I felt was missing all year.”  

To get a second shot at St. Francis, second-seeded Serra had to beat a Bellarmine team that was on an emotional high after scoring on a 94-yard pick-six in the final minute last week against Los Gatos when it looked as if the Bells’ season would end in the opening round.

Third-seeded Bellarmine had a good first quarter on defense Saturday. But the Bells had two unforced fumbles, one that ended a Bellarmine threat with the score 0-0, the other that set up Serra’s first touchdown.

Serra converted a fake field goal — a 30-yard pass from Alexander Atkins to Jabari Mann — that put the ball at the 1. Two snaps later, quarterback Dominique Lampkin scored on a 1-yard sneak for a 7-0 lead.

“We have a bag of plays that we practice in the summertime,” Walsh said. “Sometimes they get used, sometimes they don’t. It happened to be the right hash. It happened the be the right distance. It wasn’t like a gimme field goal. I’m like, ‘Let’s roll it.’”

The margin widened to 14-0 about a minute later when the Padres blocked a punt inside the 10 and Mann picked up the ball and ran across the goal line.

Leonardo Galindo’s 40-yard field goal with 3:18 left in the second quarter stretched Serra’s advantage to 17-0 at halftime. Given that Bellarmine has scored just seven points in its past five games against the Padres, including Saturday’s, the 17-point cushion was even bigger than usual.

It only got worse for the Bells in the third quarter as Petelo Gi scored on touchdowns runs of 8 and 2 yards to make it 31-0. Gi finished with 161 yards and two TDs in 22 carries.

Galindo’s 36-yard field goal and a 38-yard pass from backup quarterback Maealiuaki Smith to Antonio Gomez completed the scoring, matching the 41 points Serra had in the first meeting between the teams.

The final score in October was 41-7, the only time the Padres have yielded points to Bellarmine in the past five meetings dating to 2017.

But the scores against Serra aside, Bellarmine is moving in the right direction under Jalal Beauchman, who was hired in March 2020 to succeed his own high school coach, the legendary Mike Janda.