PREP OPENER: Special teams the difference in Catholic win over St. James
Zaylon Ligon opened the scoring early with an 83-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in Catholic’s win over St. James on Friday. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
The end result of Catholic’s 32-6 win over St. James in the 2025 season opener on Friday was probably as expected, but the journey to get there might have looked a little different as the not-so-special teams contributed more to the points than either offense.
There were missed opportunities mixed in with flashes of offensive production, but the Trojans’ only points were gift wrapped in the form of a special teams disaster and Catholic picked up three of its five touchdowns on a punt return, a fumble return and a kickoff return.
“It’s no secret we bit ourselves a couple of times,” St. James coach Larry Ware said. “We can’t do that with what we’ve got going on, depth wise. And then we got guys banged up at the same time. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Catholic set the tone for the game on the opening kickoff as Zaylon Ligon burst up the middle through the Trojan defenders and ran 83 yards for a touchdown. Just as quickly, the Knights snapped the ball over the head of Sal Barranco on a trick two-point conversion play to leave the score at 6-0.
On St. James’ next possession, quarterback Grant Phillips went off left tackle, then veered to the right on a 46-yard gain before Barranco’s touchdown-saving tackle tripped him up. The play accounted for roughly half of the Trojans’ 93 total yards and were double the Trojans’ rushing total of 23 yards on 30 carries.
Catholic got the ball back on a fumble, couldn’t move it and snapped it over punter JP Costa’s head moments later, giving the Trojans the ball at the 3-yard line. Phillips scored two plays later to make it 6-6, but Cayden Dees blocked the extra-point attempt to leave the game tied.
A screen pass to Jacob Eley that turned into an 80-yard scoring play gave the Knights the momentum and they put the game away in the third quarter, using a 74-yard punt return for a touchdown by Michael Sheffield, a 6-yard scoring reception by Eley and AJ Dottery’s 34-yard fumble return for a touchdown to pull away from the Trojans.
“I’m very proud of the way our kids competed tonight,” said Catholic coach Jonathan Chandler, who picked up his first coaching victory. “Credit to St. James, credit to Coach Ware. We knew their guys were going to come out and fight. I’m proud of our defense. They did a couple of things … that kind of caught us off the fly a little bit and I’m proud of the way we responded.
“We’re still trying to figure out who we are on offense. We compete against our defense every day and usually you’re going to have a quality football team if your defense is having some success throughout the summer and fall camp and we’ve seen that. But credit to St. James. Their guys wouldn’t quit. They were cramping up and falling all over the field and still getting in there and fighting. But offensively, we’ve got to find our niche.”
The Knights only managed 46 rushing yards and while Eley had 95 yards on five receptions and Sheffield had 62 yards on five receptions, the Catholic offense searched for chemistry and consistent production all night.
“Right now, our offense is trying to find our identity,” Dees said. “We’ve seen sparks, a big run, a catch in the back of the end zone, but we need more than those sparks. We need to find who our guys are and work to create said guys so we can have the identity to go out and punish them in the run game, punish them in the pass game, be the Catholic that we know we’re supposed to be.”
The Catholic defense was impressive at times, but will need to play better next week at St. Clair County.
“I feel like we were very physical, but at the same time we were missing our assignments,” Dees said. “Our physicality made up for it, but there were times we had linebackers who weren’t fitting up in the right gaps, defensive ends going inside or not holding your gap and getting where you needed to be. But, overall, when you play physical, it can make up for mistakes.
“Coaches always say if you’re going to mess up, mess up at 100 percent and we could see that messing up at 100 percent gave us the outcome we wanted. Now, with that being said, we don’t need to have those messups. We need to go into this next week hungry, critique what we need to critique, know our assignments and get that much closer to 100 percent.”
Catholic extended the state’s longest winning streak to 30 games and the state’s longest winning streak in regular-season games to 44, dating back to a 2020 loss to Montgomery Academy. But while the streak continued, the Knights need improvement after looking ragged in the season opener.
St. James (0-1) will also return to the drawing board, trying to get more consistent on offense as the Trojans return home to play host to Montgomery Academy next week and trying to keep from giving away points.
“We know we gave up a lot on special teams,” Ware said. “We are very aware of that and we’re going to look at the film and reevaluate ourselves, what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, and get better from it.”