Park football: ‘Pack puts up fight in 55-7 loss to Cretin-Derham Hall

Bloodied and bruised, the Park football team continued to pull itself off the mat.

Park battled perennial Suburban East Conference and state power Cretin-Derham Hall to a 7-0 first quarter, however the No. 3-ranked Raiders said enough was enough and scored 48 points in the second and third quarters to rout the Wolfpack 55-7 on Friday, Sept. 30, at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

“When I look at that game as a whole, it’s easier for us to find positives to build off. One thing, we had a nice quarter to a quarter-and-a-half with those guys until things got ugly,” First-year Park head coach Darin Glazier said. “Also, the way the kids handled themselves on the sidelines and after the game was a great improvement from what I saw a week ago.”

Park is trying to stop a 17-game losing streak dating back to Oct. 9, 2009. After a loss to White Bear Lake and an 0-4 start last week, Glazier said he felt a regenerating cynicism surrounding the team. However, against Cretin-Derham Hall, Glazier said “the attitudes of the kids were much better and that’s a big part of the battle right now.”

“We had a lot of talks about it as a coaching staff and as a team,” he said. “It’s one of those things that once the negativity starts spiraling out of control, you have no shot of finding those little successes along the way. But, I felt good about the way the kids handled themselves during and after the game. They accepted that we did make a few strides, but that we have a long way to go.”

Against Cretin-Derham Hall (5-0; 5-0 SEC), Glazier and his staff tweaked their defense, switching defensive players to new positions and moving some top offensive weapons to the other side of the ball as well.

Glazier moved defensive end Anthony Tola to middle linebacker and safety Jared Reeves to outside linebacker, brought two of Park’s fastest players – receiver D’Monte Farley and running back Dylan Smallidge – into the defensive backfield and added offensive lineman Nick Cekalla to the defensive line, too.

The adjustments paid dividends as Park (0-5; 0-5 SEC) kept the Raiders at bay until the midpoint of the second quarter when Cretin-Derham Hall scored back-to-back-to-back touchdowns to blow the game open.

“Defensively, we were doing a nice job slowing them down and we were battling them pretty well for the first quarter – Eric Black had an interception – and the kids were pretty excited,” Glazier said. “But, I’m not going to lie and say that we’re at the same caliber as that program right now. We battled as best we could.”

Cretin’s first touchdown of the game came early. After returning the opening kickoff 80 yards and inside the Wolfpack’s 10-yard line, Cretin-Derham Hall senior running back Kendrik Brewster punched in a 2-yard touchdown to put the Raiders up 7-0 just over a minute into the game. After the two teams switched sides of the field for the second quarter, Brewster struck again – this time on a 1-yard plunge—to put the Raiders up 14-0.

Cretin-Derham Hall senior quarterback Connor Rhoda then scored a rushing touchdown and threw a 10-yard touchdown pass to Connor Keane to put the Raiders up 28-0 into halftime and dash Park’s hope of an upset.

Park’s lone score of the game, in the third quarter, was of the big-play variety as senior quarterback Kyle Fritz hit junior receiver Irving Gutierrez on an 86-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown, making the game 55-7 following a Matt Goecke extra point.

On the night, Park senior quarterback Kyle Fritz led the Wolfpack with 189 yards on 11-for-26 passing, one touchdown and two interceptions. Farley had a team-high four catches for 54 yards and Gutierrez had a team-leading 91 yards receiving on two catches. Park struggled to move the ball on the ground against the stellar Raiders’ defense, totaling just 12 rushing yards on 16 attempts.

Cretin-Derham Hall ran for 265 yards and passed for 103 yards in the game. Brewster led the attack with 142 yards and three touchdowns on 16 carries. Rhoda was 8-for-12 passing for 91 yards and two scores and rushed twice for 24 yards and a touchdown.

Park slid down the conference rankings to eighth for total offense with 1,426 yards, just behind Stillwater’s 1,430 yards. Defensively, the Wolfpack is last in the conference in total yards allowed at 2,305 yards – 1,734 of which have come on the ground – and total points allowed at 253.

Individually, Fritz leads the Suburban East Conference in passing yards with 1,023 to go along with a second-best seven touchdowns. Smallidge is third in the SEC in rushing with 404 yards on 70 carries, along with five touchdowns and Farley is second in the SEC in receiving with 342 yards, along with three touchdowns.

Glazier said the goal is to get Park to the level where it can compete for a full game with teams like Cretin-Derham Hall, or Mounds View or Stillwater. He said it will have to start at the youngest levels.

“We’ll get to that level, but it’s going to take some time,” Glazier said. “We need to build it from the ground, up. Cretin doesn’t need to worry about that. But, those other teams have very strong youth programs and that’s what we need to get to.”

Next, Park travels to Hastings (1-4; 1-4 SEC) for the Raiders’ homecoming. Glazier, a 1987 Hastings graduate, will be one of the school’s alums on hand – but likely the only hoping for a Park win.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Glazier said. “It’ll be fun to coach against a team I used to play for. They’re a really good football team. They’ve lost a lot of close games this year. It’ll be a good test for us. I’m looking forward to the matchup and seeing how our guys respond.”

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