FITCHBURG - The second time was a charm.
St. Bernard Central Catholic High School’s football team won the Massachusetts Division 8 state championship Dec. 1 with a 46 - 35 victory over Pope John XXIII of Everett at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro.
It was the second time the Bernardians had played in a championship game at Gillette.
The first time was in 2015. St. Bernard took on a tough Mashpee team and played them even until the fourth period when Mashpee pulled away for a 28 - 8 win.
Saturday’s Super Bowl game was a back-and-forth battle from beginning to end. St. Bernard led, 8 - 6 after the first period, 16 - 14 at half time and 24 - 20 after three periods.
In the wild final period, the Bernardians took a 32 to 20 lead, Pope John closed the gap to 32 - 28, St. Bernard scored again, extending the lead to 38 - 28. But Pope John wouldn’t go away. They cut the lead to 38 - 35. St. Bernard responded once more with a score and won, 46 to 35.
The 37 points the teams combined to score in the fourth period was reportedly a state championship Super Bowl record. The previous record was 30 points scored in 1982 by Melrose and Natick.
Scoring points was the hallmark of the Bernardians this season. In 13 games, including their Super Bowl victory, the team totaled 526 points, for an average of slightly more than 40 points a game. Their opponents totaled 163, according to the school’s web site.
The Bernardians finished the season with 12 wins and one loss. That loss, 14 to 8 on Oct. 6, was to Nipmuck Regional High School of Upton. Nipmuck, a much larger school, was good enough to make the Super Bowl in Division 5, where it lost to to Scituate.
The Bernardians are used to playing bigger schools. The school has just 132 students, 68 of them boys, half of whom are on the football team. That reportedly is the fewest number of boys of any of the 327 high schools in the state that play football. Pope John XXIII is also a small school with 92 boys in grades 9 through 12.
St. Bernard principal Robert Blanchard said that when St. Bernard played Fitchburg High there were about 90 boys on the Fitchburg football squad. That was the first game of the season and St. Bernard won, 36 - 18.
Coach Tom Bingham became an assistant coach at St. Bernard in 1996. He was named head coach in 2005. In 2016 the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association named him Football Coach of the Year.
This year he took a veteran team to Gillette Stadium. He lost only four players to graduation and had 21 starters from last year’s team. He said the team this year is a “nice mix.” About 1/3 are sophomores, about 1/3 are juniors and about 1/3 are seniors.
Those seniors who were on the team for four years compiled quite a record. It was 11 - 1 their freshman year, 9 - 2 their sophomore year, 7 - 4 last year and 12 - 1 this year. That’s 39 wins, eight loses in four years.
Coach Bingham thought that the fact that the game this year was the first on the day-long schedule, starting at 9 a.m., proved an advantage. It allowed the team to go through its regular pre-game warm-up routine rather than being rushed between games.