PHILADELPHIA — A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, St. Joseph’s Prep coach Tim Roken addressed his downtrodden team that day after the Hawks lost to archrival La Salle in quadruple overtime. Roken took the responsibility for the loss, blaming himself over the mistakes he felt he made. He felt he let his players down.
The twist is, the players thought that they had let Roken and his staff down. The core of the 2024 St. Joe’s Hawks have taken it upon themselves to grab the rest of their teammates and drag them back to a rematch with La Salle.
If things hold to chalk, that may come on Saturday, November 9 at 1 p.m. at Wissahickon High School. In the meantime, the Hawks still have work to do, like finishing out their schedule.
Part II of The Prep’s payback tour came Saturday night at Penn’s historic Franklin Field in a 48-20 shootout victory over Roman Catholic.
The Hawks (5-2) will conclude their regular season next Friday night hosting Bonner-Prendie at a venue to be determined.
But the residue of the La Salle loss has exactly been washed away.
“These last two weeks have been easy at all, because we have not played to our potential and we know it,” said Hawks’ senior receiver Rameir Hardy, who is Temple bound and who caught two touchdown passes against Roman. “We have good moments in games, good highs, but the lows are low. We just have to find a median and get better each and every week.
“Even tonight, we scored 48 points and we didn’t play our best game. We had a couple of missed throws, and a couple of drops, so we settled for field goals and left points off the board. There is more work to do. This is not good enough. As a team, we have to be better. Charlie Foulke played great, but he knows he has more work to do.”
Hardy, one of the Hawks’ character leaders, stressed something about the La Salle loss.
“Everyone took accountability, there was no blame to go around, players, coaches, we all took accountability for that,” Hardy said. “We know we lost the game. Our coaches put us in position to execute plays and we didn’t execute. We dropped touchdowns, we dropped passes, we missed blocks, we missed tackles, everyone played a part in that loss. That loss should have never happened, but it did happen and we can only get better. Losing to them fueled our whole team. Everyone is upset, because we did not play to our standard. We can’t start slow. We start slow, we get into dog fights with real good teams.”
Prep never trailed, though the game had a playground quality to it. You blinked, someone scored. Foulke threw two first-quarter interceptions on consecutive plays, one to Roman’s Jojo Delecce and the other to Roman defensive lineman Mykell Fords.
The first Roman pick the Cahillites capitalized, turning it into a Semaj Beals’ 7-yard TD pass to William Felder that tied the score at 7-7 with 6:26 left in the first quarter. The Fords’ pick, however, was converted into sophomore Masya Acrey’s 32-yard touchdown interception return in what was the play of the game.
Two weeks ago, Acrey did a good job covering La Salle’s lethal junior receiver Joey O’Brien.
After the 7-7 tie, Prep scored 27 unanswered points, including a 93-yard, third-quarter TD pass from Foulke to freshman Jett Harrison, Marvin Harrison Jr.’s younger brother.
There is still a lot clean up, especially defensively, for the Hawks, who gave up 61- and 92-yard bombs to the Cahillites Semaj Beals.
The Hawks admit they still have a lot to fix—and just a few weeks to fix them.
Scoring Summary
Roman Catholic (6-3) – 7 0 7 6-20
St. Joe’s Prep (5-2) 14 10 10 14-48
1st Quarter
SJP –Will Vokolos 7 run (Leo Ricci kick), 9:01
RC – William Felder 7 pass from Semaj Beals (Eli Pollack kick), 6:26
SJP – Masya Acrey 32 INT return (Ricci kick), 2:08
2nd Quarter
SJP – Ricci 37 FG, 11:06
SJP – Jett Harrison 93 pass from Charlie Foulke (Ricci kick), 1:17
3rd Quarter
SJP – Ricci 41 FG, 8:54
SJP – Rameir Hardy 13 pass from Foulke (Ricci kick), 4:45
RC – Eyan Stead 61 pass from Beals (Pollack kick), 3:26
4th Quarter
SJP – Jamir Rowe 17 run (Ricci kick), 9:57
RC – Rayshawn Scott 92 pass from Beals (kick failed), 9:31
SJP – Hardy 46 pass from Foulke (Ricci kick), 7:59
Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter who has been covering high school football since 1992 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter @JSantoliquito.
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