Lawrence Park sweeps football titles

Lawrence Park sweeps football titles. Agincourt Collegiate's Nick Zervoudakis, left, breaks up a passing play to Lawrence Park Collegiate's Justin Babin during city-wide TDSSAA senior Tier II football championship action at Esther Shiner Stadium on Thursday. Lawrence Park went on to take the game and the title with a 26-18 win. Photo/MIKE POCHWAT

The junior Panther team earned bragging rights as the top junior high school football team in Toronto, winning the city junior championship 36-0 over North York's Senator O'Connor, to cap an impressive undefeated season.

Running back Steve Trivieri scored three of the five touchdowns with the others going to Michael Merry and Adam Young.

Payam Taban converted four of them and Max Triskan rounded out the scoring with a safety.

Meanwhile, the senior Panther team, after being bounced from the tier one playdowns, flexed their muscles in tier two by winning the tier-two title 26-18 over Scarborough's Agincourt. Scoring was taken care of by Jovan Ross (two touchdowns), Justin Babin (touchdown and two-point conversion), Andrew Zanatta (field goal and convert) and Nick Bragagnolo (safety).

The neat symmetry in the city titles came on two notable anniversaries for the venerable school - 70 years ago it also won a junior title and 60 years ago it also won the senior title.

"In fact the 1939 junior championship picture was just given to the school, donated at our Remembrance Day ceremonies," said Peter Gilbert, head coach of the junior team and staff advisor for the senior team. "Some of the older vets from the school came in and identified some of the players on the team as guys who had been killed in World War Two. So it was pretty touching."

Interestingly, he said alumni from the 1949 champion senior football team also held a reunion this year "and a player and I were invited to talk to the guys."

Alumni from both teams would no doubt be pleased with the current crop, particularly the juniors, who rolled off four straight playoff wins, on the heels of a perfect, but hard fought, 5-0 regular season.

The juniors proved dominant in the city playdowns as they also won the city semifinal by a wide margin - 27-0 over Scarborough's Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

The going wasn't quite so easy in their own south division.

They needed overtime to win their south final 15-14 over perennial powerhouse Northern, which followed a 15-0 semifinal win over East York.

Their 5-0 regular season record was earned the hard way with some pretty close cliffhangers, including 20-19 over Northern, 15-13 over Leaside and 27-20 over East York (along with a couple of shutouts, 19-0 over Central Tech and 12-0 over Don Bosco).

"This junior team is the best team I've ever coached in football in all the years I've coached," said Gilbert.

Not only did the team have talent ("we had tremendous depth, good players at just about all of our positions"), but they worked hard ("they started practising Sept. 9. We had three days off between Sept. 9 and Nov. 19.").

Among the leaders of the strong cast were:

* Steve Trivieri: "he's our tailback and scored the vast majority of our points this year, just a tremendous player."

* Alex Gook: "our quarterback, he actually sprained his ankle badly (in the semifinal) and I didn't even think he was going to be able to play. He was instrumental, calling audibles and reading the defence, he just was spectacular at QB."

* Max Triskan: "he played linebacker and made some terrific hits, super season."

* linemen Steve Tweedley and Cory Edwards: "we had two players that played both ways and they played almost every game both ways for the full game. There were only a few games this year that we were ahead enough to make a lot of substitutions."

And then he also added: "We had tons of players. You could just put the team picture up if you want."

The senior team, meanwhile, after finishing the regular season with a 2-2 record and a 24-0 opening round playoff loss to Central Tech, went on to sweep their next three games to claim tier two honours, including 49-14 over East York's Marc Garneau, the defending tier two champ, in the semifinal and 20-13 over Scarborough's Sir John A Macdonald in the quarterfinal.

Coach Gilbert rebuffed this writer's flip use of the world 'consolation'.

"They're full value for a championship. A city championship is a city championship. And tier two is a notch below (tier one) but it isn't that far below."

Numbers always seem to be an issue for the senior team, he said, limited to about 25 players this season.

"We're a small, undersized team that manages to play tough defence."

Naturally he's hoping, and probably praying, the senior numbers will be bolstered next season by graduating players from the best junior team in the city.