Champagnat football beats Miami Christian to advance to next week’s Region 4-2A final

After all the preseason chirping by Champagnat coach Hector Clavijo about Miami Christian not worthy of being considered a local rival because of a soft schedule, (“they play in the pastelito league”), he and his Champagnat players went out and backed it all up Thursday night.

Hosting the Victors at Curtis Park, Champagnat jumped out to a 21-0 first half lead and never looked back, rolling to an easy 35-7 victory in a Region 4-2A semifinal.

The No. 1 seeded Lions (7-3), who are looking to get back to a third consecutive 2A state title game (winning it two years ago) will host either Moore Haven or Fort Lauderdale Westminster Academy in a Region 4-2A final next week. The game will be played on Nov. 22 with Curtis Park as a likely venue.

“Never a doubt,” said Clavijo. “With the kind of tough schedule that we play, we went into this game very confident that we would be able to take care of business and we did. We have the horses but you have to know how to ride those horses as well and we’ve got that down. Time to move on.”

Clavijo backed up that confidence as well when not once, but twice, went for it on fourth down on the game’s opening drive. Eventually it paid off when Malik Rutherford went over from 7 yards out to give the Lions an early 7-0 lead.

“As confident as we were, I was even more confident in our defense’s ability to shut them down offensively and that’s what happened,” said Clavijo as the MC offense indeed was held to just one first down in the first half and that was by penalty.

Donavan Jones scored from 9 yards out early in the second quarter before quarterback Ryle Aguila found Rutherford for a 25 yard scoring pass just before halftime to make it 21-0.

The Lions then put up two more third quarter touchdowns, Aguila scoring the second on a five yard quarterback keeper to make it 35-0 and get the running clock going, allowing Clavijo to start subbing in players.

This story was originally published November 15, 2019 at 2:10 PM.