St. Thomas Aquinas looks to end state title ‘drought’ at two seasons
Normally when a team is coming off an appearance in the state championship game from the year before, that’s something you can proudly puff your chest out and say “look what we did.”
Unless you are St. Thomas Aquinas.
At a program where the bar is set so ridiculously high, sometimes it’s even hard to see it, last year’s state title game appearance turned out to be a major disappointment.
The Raiders went into the 7A championship game expected to beat Lakeland, bring home state championship banner No. 11 and tie Jacksonville Bolles for the most titles in the state.
But in a rare “sloppy” performance by Aquinas standards, the Raiders were sent home with runner-up medals instead following a surprising 33-20 loss to the Dreadnaughts.
There was nothing great about the 2018 season and 2017 for that matter, a season where St. Thomas didn’t even reach the title game when a trip to the west coast resulted in a 27-20 loss to Venice in a 7A semifinal.
Not when you have won the three previous state championships (2014 to 16).
Not when you hang a total of 10 championship banners in your gym.
Not when you have a loaded roster littered with FBS recruits.
Nope, the last two years, in which the Raiders have had to watch their opponents celebrate on the field at their disposal, have been a humbling experience.
One which has given head coach Roger Harriott and his players a chance to hit the reset button once again and hopefully come out with a new revived hunger as the 2019 season gets under way.
The bar at St. Thomas is what I like to call a blessed expectation,” Harriott said. “We’re required to win both on and off the field, thus the standard is extremely high and I wouldn’t want it any other way. We signed up to get both criticized and praised.
“Obviously we would prefer the latter, but it’s all part of the journey and we’re at an institution that has a substantial amount of integrity, and when you go through difficult times, you lean on a strong alumni base and some fantastic individuals that know how to be family-oriented and establish an independent way of thinking in order for us to pull ourselves up and move forward.”
It’s almost hard to comprehend, but should the Raiders, who enter the season as the state’s No. 1-ranked team in 7A and No. 10 in the country in Max Preps’ Xcellent Top 25 poll, go another year without winning the championship, it would mark the biggest championship ‘drought’ (after winning their first in 1991) since 2000 to 2007.
“It’s definitely going to be a driving force,” said wide receiver Marcus Rosemy, a Georgia commit. “After we lost that game in Orlando, it was really heartbreaking and just a really empty feeling. Our entire off season has been about training and making sure not to let it happen again. To get back up there this time and finish the job.”
The team ranked right behind St. Thomas is 7A is Lakeland so a rematch, this time at Municipal Stadium in Daytona Beach, between these two state powers is a very good possibility.
“Basically everybody knows it was a tough moment for us sitting on the field when it was over knowing we had come up short of our goal,” said linebacker and Florida commit Derek Wingo. “It was hard to process that we had gone 14 games and come up short. It’s kind of been our motivation during the off season, just getting after things in practice everyday and make sure we finish strong.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2019 at 11:50 AM.