Pacifica football falls to St. Anthony in semifinals as potential winning TD is wiped out by a penalty

LONG BEACH — The Pacifica football team’s chance at a true storybook season fell one miracle short of a happy ending Friday.

The Mariners committed five turnovers, and a penalty nullified a game-winning touchdown with sevenseconds remaining in a 17-14 loss to St. Anthony in a CIF Southern Section Division 10 semifinal.

The Mariners (7-6) rose from the ashes of a 3-7 season last year to being a couple of plays away from playing for a section title next week.

“I’m so proud of the kids,” Pacifica second-year coach Kyle Murphy said. “As our coaches said, these seniors havelaid a special foundation to continue to build this program. Overall, I just couldn’t be prouder of the kids.”

The Mariners defense was staunch, holding the Saints (9-5) to 204 yards of total offense. Pacifica intercepted two passes, the second returned by Jakob Davis 70 yards for a TD.

But Pacifica’s offense could not overcome four interceptions and one lost fumble, plus two touchdowns wiped out by penalties.

Noah Lewis’ 37-yard scoring run in the first quarter was wiped out by a holding penalty.

Then with seven seconds left in the game, a 22-yard touchdown pass to Armando Torres from James Anema was nullified when it was ruled Torres stepped out of bounds then came back in before catching the ball in the end zone, making him an ineligible receiver.

Defensive end Logan Aranda intercepted two passes for St. Anthony. His second, a diving catch of a deflection off a Pacifica receiver, set up a 35-yard field goal in the third quarter.

Anema had his struggles, completing 14 of 31 passes for 194 yards with four interceptions.

“If you have five turnovers in a semifinal game, it’s really hard to win,” Murphy said. “And we had penalties at inopportune times. Credit to them (St. Anthony), they made a lot of plays. But making five turnovers isn’t going to win you a lot of football games.”

To its credit, the St. Anthony defense came up big without the aid of penalties. In the first quarter, the Saintsforced a turnover on downs at the St. Anthony 26 when Anema was drilled on a blitz, overthrowing his fourth-downreceiver.

“We made plays, they made plays, ultimately we had no real rhythm on offense,” Murphy said. “We’d gets somethings going and we’d have a turnover, or we’d have a penalty. It’s hard to be successful when you’re turning theball over and beating yourself.”