Chaminade-Madonna, Cardinal Gibbons are budding Broward dynasties with eyes on repeating

Willie Moise was already a state champion when he started practicing with Chaminade-Madonna in the spring ahead of his sophomore season. Now a four-star defensive tackle in the 247Sports.com composite rankings, Moise was just a promising underclassmen then, but he had been raised in a championship culture for his freshman season.

Moise spent the fall of his freshman year in Georgia, playing for Valdosta, one of the state’s perennial powerhouses, and he was, in his own words, the first freshman on varsity in “about 50 years.” He learned quickly what makes a great program great.

Summer training camp meant 5:30 a.m. wakeup calls to be out on the field to start two-a-days at 6:30 a.m. It meant constant razzing from upperclassmen, trying to indoctrinate a freshman into the championship grind. It meant open-field tackling drills that pitted a Moise, then a doughy defensive end, up against offensive linemen pushing 300 pounds.

“Over there in Valdosta, linemen tackle linemen,” said Moise, who is orally committed to the Miami Hurricanes. “Offensive linemen running the ball, you’re supposed to tackle them. I’m running full speed, I think I’m going to knock this dude. I got ran flat over by a varsity lineman, and these are big people.

“That’s what I mainly got my toughness from, was just being punched in the mouth constantly.”

The setup with his new team in Hollywood was far different than in Georgia, where the Wildcats play in the state’s second-largest classification. The Lions, instead, were on the verge of becoming one of Florida’s premier small-school powerhouses, and Moise could immediately tell they were on their way.

Now Chaminade-Madonna is one of two Broward County schools in Class 5A or smaller aiming for a championship defense in 2019. The Lions are trying to make it three in a row — and Moise four — after routing King’s Academy 38-10 to win Class 3A in the fall. Cardinal Gibbons, now in Class 4A, is seeking a repeat after blowing out Citra North Marion 48-10 to win 5A last year.

This year will be a test of both program’s cultures. Chaminade-Madonna is replacing a senior class that included six of the top 250 players in the state’s Class of 2018, including Miami defensive backs Keontra Smith and Te’Cory Couch. The Chiefs have to replace eight of top 350, including Florida Gators linebacker Khris Bogle.

“Right now, we’ve got to try to just set the culture,” Lions coach Dameon Jones said. “Right now is not the culture that we might have in five weeks or toward the end and that comes with it, and this is the time every year we’re starting to figure it out.”

Cardinal Gibbons got a head start on finding its identity for a repeat in the final weeks of the 2018 season. All year long, quarterback Nik Scalzo, now a freshman for the Kentucky Wildcats, was the driving force of the Chiefs’ offense, a freewheeling, playmaking veteran to lead a veteran team. In the region semifinal, Scalzo tried to find the end zone on a trick play and wound up with a season-ending knee injury.

Quarterback Brody Paleghyi started the final three games of Cardinal Gibbons’ season. It was unlikely, but this was how the Fort Lauderdale school won its first state title after two years of loaded rosters and heartbreaking playoff losses.

“The first two years I was the head coach, we had really good football teams and we got beat in the second round by two really, really good football teams,” Chiefs coach Matt DuBuc said. “At the end of the day here, all you can do is put yourself in the position to have success.”

Beyond the sheer volume of talent at both schools, both programs have succeeded by — cliche as it sounds — emphasizing a team-first culture. As good as Scalzo was as a freelancer, Cardinal Gibbons was always at its best when the quarterback was taking advantage of all the talent around him as a distributor. DuBuc, weirdly, is almost even more confident in Paleghyi to do this, just as he did when he had to take over in the postseason.

At Chaminade-Madonna, it’s almost even more obvious. When Moise first joined the Lions, all his experience was as a defensive lineman, and it’s now what every school recruiting him wants him play.

Jones didn’t care. The first year he played at Chaminade-Madonna, Moise strictly stuck to the offensive line.

“All the great teams, they play as a team. Nobody’s selfish. Everybody plays together,” Moise said. “Once I seen that they had that bond here, I knew we were going to go far, so that’s really the one key that I see, that’s a winning team you have to play as a team.”