{"id":2646,"date":"2009-11-28T13:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-28T13:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/cif-football-poly-s-season-ends-in-nailbiter-with-servite\/"},"modified":"2009-11-28T13:18:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T13:18:00","slug":"cif-football-poly-s-season-ends-in-nailbiter-with-servite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/cif-football-poly-s-season-ends-in-nailbiter-with-servite","title":{"rendered":"CIF Football: Poly’s Season Ends In Nailbiter With Servite"},"content":{"rendered":"


<\/em>Photo by John Fajardo<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

At Long Beach Poly, the success of a football season is judged on one thing: championships.\u00a0 <\/span>And while that’s understandable, and to an extent admirable, it’s also a shame\u2014because while they fell short of a third straight CIF championship this year, you’d be hard-pressed to find a team in the Southern Section that improved more from week one (a 30-7 thumping at the hands of Servite) to their last game (a nailbiting 21-18 loss to the same team, in a game with four lead changes).\u00a0 <\/span>Servite QB Cody Fajardo led two unbelievable drives to close out both halves to get the Friars the win.<\/p>\n

Fajardo’s first drive came when Poly fans least expected it\u2014when Servite took the ball with 3:19 left in the first half, their drives had thus far ended in a turnover (when a backwards pass by Fajardo was dropped and Corey Waller fell on it) and three <\/em>three-and-outs, thanks to outstandings reads and tackles by the Poly defense.\u00a0 <\/span>That didn’t seem to bother the Friars, as they drove 79 yard in three minutes, eventually scoring on a 15-yard run up the middle by Fajardo.\u00a0 <\/span>With that score, the Friars took a 7-6 lead into the half\u2014Poly had previously scored on a Cory Westbrook TD run, but missed the extra point.<\/span><\/p>\n

A botched Poly fake punt gave Servite a short field midway through the third quarter, and they took opened the lead to 14-6 on a Fajardo TD pass that went for 19 yards.\u00a0 <\/span>Then Poly led the drive of their season, a 91-yard, 6:28 touchdown drive capped by a Kaelin Clay score that brought them to within two after the Rabbits failed on the two-point try.\u00a0 <\/span>Servite took a long drive into Poly territory, but a fumble into the end zone gave Poly the ball back with seven minutes left in the game; Clay decided to do it himself, ripping a 73-yard touchdown run up the middle to give Poly an 18-14 lead (the Rabbits again missed on the 2PC).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

That gave Servite the ball with 4:29 left\u2014and anybody who’s seen them play for the last two years knows that’s too much time.\u00a0 <\/span>Fajardo took his offense onto the field at the Servite 6\u2014and proceeded to march them downfield on a 94 yard touchdown drive over the next three minutes, with every single yard coming off his arm or feet.\u00a0 <\/span>The Friars converted twice on fourth down on the drive\u2014the first time gave Poly fans something to scratch their heads over, when a very late flag came in for defensive pass interference on fourth-and-three.\u00a0 <\/span>I had a pretty clear shot at the play and it didn’t look like the contact warranted a flag.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Poly got the ball back down 21-18 with 1:32 left and no scores, and Rabbits QB Chris Leachman led a drive all the way to the Servite 22, setting a field goal try to tie the game\u2014which Servite blocked to end it.\u00a0 <\/span>Fajardo finished with 183 yards passing, 99 yards rushing, and all three Servite touchdowns.\u00a0 <\/span>The Friars gained 295 yards on Friday\u2014282 of them were gained by Fajardo, who said after the game that he loves running the hurry-up offense.\u00a0 <\/span>“It helps so much, because it limits what the defense can do,” he said.<\/p>\n

Poly got gutty performances on both sides of the ball, with Clay getting two scores and 124 yards on 12 rushes in his last game as a Jackrabbit.\u00a0 <\/span>Leachman had an ugly line, but came through in crunch time\u2014he was 7-9 for 97 yards on third and fourth down, with completions to six receivers and six of the completions going for first downs.\u00a0 <\/span>Those two long drives were backbreakers, but the Poly defense played well otherwise, with turnovers and big tackles when they needed them.\u00a0 <\/span>The offense led three drives of over five minutes but only got points on one of those efforts.\u00a0 <\/span>Regardless of the outcome, the fight Poly showed was impressive, and an unbelievable contrast to the listless effort they put up in the first week.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Looking to the future, the Jackrabbits will return a lot of players from this year’s team, and with the game they gave a Servite team that whomped them in week one, and a special player in Fajardo, it’s easy to believe next year will be less rocky than 2009 was.\u00a0 <\/span>“What we went through this year will help tremendously with the next few years,” said Poly coach Raul Lara after the game.\u00a0 <\/span>“Watch out\u2014we’ll be back.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jackrabbits’ season ended in a wild game with four lead changes, thanks largely to the hands and feet of Servite QB Cody Fajardo, who led two long TD drives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}