True North Academy secures first state semifinal berth in young program’s fourth year
Greg Laffere is no stranger to building winners from scratch.
Laffere, a former University of Miami offensive lineman, helped the Hurricanes’ climb back to winning a national title in 2001.
And as an assistant coach to Mario Cristobal during his days at FIU, he helped the Panthers win their first bowl game in 2010.
Laffere’s latest team transformation has come at the high school level where he and his staff have spent the past four years turning True North Classical Academy into a winner.
That process reached a special milestone on Friday afternoon when the Titans, a program in its fourth year overall and third year playing varsity football, secured their first-ever trip to the state semifinals following a 58-37 victory over Miami Palmer Trinity at Tropical Park.
True North (9-3), which had never won a regional playoff game before this season, will next take on Hollywood Chaminade - ranked No. 5 nationally by MaxPreps - at 7 p.m. at the Lions’ home field next week.
“It’s a tremendous achievement. There’s been a ton of work that’s gone into it and all the credit goes to the kids,” Laffere said. “We have a lot of guys who make a lot of plays in a lot of different ways. It’s crazy to see a lot of these guys who were eighth graders in my first class and now they’re seniors and heading to the state final four with a chance to do something cool.”
The Titans are graduating their first senior class this season. But the bulk of its key players are eighth-graders, freshmen and sophomores.
One of those eighth-graders is quarterback Zac Katz, who threw four touchdown passes and completed 15 of 20 passes for 290 yards. Katz threw three of those touchdown passes to freshman J-Roc Lopez, who totaled nine catches for 208 yards receiving.
Meanwhile, True North’s defense recovered three fumbles including one Jaysen Lopez returned for a 16-yard touchdown. Tristan Smith, who ran for two touchdowns, picked up another fumble and junior Michael Soloman also recovered a fumble and had two sacks.
True North’s special teams set the tone early when senior Jacob Camacho returned a short kickoff 50 yards for a touchdown to open the game.
“We’re not the most talented team in Miami-Dade County, but we pride ourselves on playing good football,” Laffere said. “We try to teach our guys the game and how to lean on each other and play to our weaknesses and disguise them. We create turnovers and we try to be explosive in special teams and flip the field on guys.”
The Titans led 17-0 after one quarter and never trailed despite the Falcons continually pulling within one score thanks to their prolific passing game. With both teams kicking short on kickoffs, they kept putting the other on a short field and leading to quick scores.
Palmer Trinity’s Aden Davenport had one of the best passing performances ever by a Miami-Dade quarterback in the playoffs. Davenport completed 27 of 37 passes for 469 yards and three touchdown passes.
Davenport’s 2-yard touchdown pass to Walker Smith cut True North’s lead to 45-37 late in the fourth.
But the Titans answered quickly when Katz found Lopez open down the sideline for a touchdown.
“We were pretty specific in our game plan formationally and in personnel so early on we had a lot of success seeing what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it,” Laffere said. “We were able to get a nice lead early and thank goodness because they made some adjustments and created some turnovers there at the end.”
Laffere acknowledged that his young program still has an uphill battle when it comes to earning recognition statewide. But a major opportunity could come as early as next week if it can challenge Chaminade - a team seeking its fourth state title in five years.
“As a new program you have to fight a little bit to get noticed and get the notoriety of the city and winning a couple of playoff games will help do that,” Laffere said. “As we built a high school we built a football program and if you want to be known in South Florida, you have to have a good football program. Everyone knows Columbus, St. Thomas, American Heritage and everyone knows those places because they win football games.
“And so we’ll never apologize for having success but to do it in a classical curriculum setting with a culture that is strict, I take a tremendous amount of pride in that. We still have a long way to go to where we’d like to be, but we’re heading in the right direction.”
This story was originally published November 26, 2022 at 2:41 AM.
