Naples News: Sports

High school football scores from around the Sunshine State

The Cardinals blew their major league-leading 30th save chance on Mike Jacobs’ 29th homer off rookie Chris Perez with one out in the ninth.

Israel Gallegos’ first game as Immokalee’s head coach did not turn out quite as he would have liked, but reflecting on Friday night’s 17-0 loss to Cape Coral, he had a line that would make Yogi Berra proud.

Friday's prep football scores from around the Sunshine State.

The rebuilding project under way in the Estero football program could take three or four years to complete.

The Trojans looked formidable in a 42-21 drubbing of Barron Collier on Friday night at Barron, behind a high-flying offense led by quarterback Dennis Marcelin and halfback Darian Hall.

With a penchant for pulling off big plays, the visiting Westminster Christian Warriors ended a two-game drought against St. John Neumann on Friday night in the regular-season opener for both teams.

“We got the Gate!” the Bears players chanted, as a couple of them lifted the revolving trophy that goes to the winner of the annual Palmetto-Golden Gate game.

Defending Class 3A champion and current No. 1 team Naples got knocked on its heels early Friday before mounting a comeback and narrowly losing 24-23 to fifth-ranked Miami Monsignor Pace. After going 15-0 last season, this was the first regular-season loss for the Eagles in almost two years.

Alex Rios hit a solo homer in the third and a two-run drive in the eighth for his third career multihomer game and second this season.

“I was encouraged by what I saw,” FGCU coach Dave Nichols said. “Houston is a very physical team and these matches will have us prepared for conference.”

After having Friday night off to watch some other football around the county, the Sharks will get up early Saturday morning and ride a bus more than two hours to Miami Belen Jesuit. Because the school does not have lights on its football field, the game kicks off at 3 p.m. under the hot midafternoon sun.

LPGA Tour commissioner Carolyn Bivens issued a statement on Friday, saying that the tour would revise its recently announced policy regarding having its foreign players learn to speak English, or face possibly suspension.

Naples knows it won’t see the same Miami Monsignor Pace football team tonight that it drubbed 33-6 in last year’s season opener. This year’s Spartans should come to town improved, experienced and, more importantly, bent on revenge.

Scott Kazmir did his part to get the Tampa Bay Rays back on track.

Four years and two days ago, football was born at Golden Gate and Palmetto Ridge when the first-year schools met in their inaugural game on the Bears’ field. All of those original players are gone, but that doesn’t mean the annual Battle for the Gate between Collier County’s youngest public schools has lost any significance to this new crop of players.

Estero is the heavy underdog. It’s a familiar tag, one that the Wildcats carried through last year’s winless season and one that will accompany them throughout the 2008 campaign as Rich Dombroski attempts to reconstruct a once-proud program. Tonight’s game could prove to be a good gauge of the Wildcats’ character in the early going under their new coach.

“Lely is humongous across the board,” Barron coach Mike Ivey said. “Even in the secondary they have good size and their offensive line is massive. Their quarterback (Dennis Marcelin) is big enough to be a college linebacker. No doubt about it, this will be a physical game.”

It’s become a bit of tradition — a ritual the members of the St. John Neumann Celtics football team have enjoyed over the last couple of years more than the Warriors of Miami-Westminster Christian School.

Last season, this was the game that broke Immokalee’s 14-game regular-season winning streak.