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Moments after a Sept. 25 loss to Annapolis Area Christian School, St. Vincent Pallotti High School football coach Pat Courtemanche looked out at his team.
They were a dejected group. Two costly Pallotti fumbles allowed Annapolis Area Christian to erase a 13-3 halftime deficit, and the Eagles scored the winning points with a 31-yard touchdown pass on the game's final play.
It was the first league game for the Panthers in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association C Conference, putting a team that dreamed of winning the title in the hole.
"I told them that if we win the rest of our games this year, we'll be champions," Courtemanche said. "But we have to take it one game at a time."
Since then Pallotti (4-4 overall, 3-1 league) has won three consecutive games and now has a chance to move into a first-place tie with Annapolis Area (6-2, 4-0) when the two schools meet in a rematch at
7 p.m. Friday at Arundel High School in Gambrills.
If Pallotti beats Annapolis Area and both schools win their finales, they will be co-champions with identical 5-1 conference records and a split of their head-to-head games. Annapolis Area will win the MIAA C Conference championship with a victory on Friday.
"We're going into the game as if it's a championship game," Courtemanche said. "If we win, we control our destiny and a championship is a championship."
Pallotti will not have one of its key players for the game. Senior running back/defensive back Keith Charles was ejected in Friday's 15-7 victory against Baltimore Lutheran for a late hit out of bounds during the fourth quarter.
The MIAA's policy is that if a player is ejected he is ineligible to play in the next game, MIAA Executive Director Rick Diggs said in an e-mail.
"It's what happens, I don't necessarily agree with the call," Courtemanche said. "But we'll have to replace Keith on defense and offense, and I'm game planning that now."
Annapolis Area quarterback Chris Chick threw the winning touchdown pass to Chandler Edmonds on the final play of the Sept. 25 game. It was the Eagles' first lead of the game, but that moment has become a rallying cry for Pallotti.
"We were in control, we had the ball twice in the last four minutes, and we fumbled the ball both times," Courtemanche said. "We could have run the clock out. The kids, I believe, learned from it. We have to respect them, they beat us, but we know we could have won that game. Instead, we saw them celebrating in our parking lot, and heard them trash talking. The kids remember that, and they'll be ready."