Cubs Conquest

Palisadians Power Loyola High Freshman Football Team to Undefeated Season

By STEVE GALLUZZO  |  Sports Editor

The future of the Loyola High football program is bright, thanks in large part to 16 Palisadians who helped the Cubs’ freshman team go undefeated for the first time in 44 years. The ninth-grade squad finished 9-0 and won the Angelus League championship, outscoring the four freshman/frosh-soph and JV teams it faced by an average of 48 points. Overall, the Cubs outscored their opponents 374-66 under coach Lamont Freeman.

“I knew we had a good crew of players coming into Loyola from our Corpus Christi gang one year after we’d won the CYO flag football banner,” defensive lineman Max Meier said. “What made this season even sweeter was sharing it with our broader group of Pali buddies from Calvary, St. Matt’s and elsewhere. There are 10 or 12 boys at Loyola who grew up playing Pali Rec League flag football and PPBA baseball together and some of us go further back to Coach Tharen Todd’s Football Camps and YMCA Pee Wee football at Simon Meadow when we were 7. Jack Thomas and I played together in the City of LA Flag Football championship in 2018. There’s lots of history and bonding with this crew and we’ll keep grinding and see how far we can go into the CIF playoffs over the next three seasons.”    

Meier and Nathan Turk were teammates on the Corpus Christi team that won the Catholic Youth Organization football championship (the Los Angeles Archdiocese) as 8th-graders in 2021.   

“The best part of our undefeated season was the connection among our team and experiencing firsthand the Loyola brotherhood,” said Turk, an offensive and defensive lineman who grew up in the El Medio Bluffs and became Corpus Christi’s first male recipient of the CYO Athlete of the Year Award in June after excelliung in football, basketball and volleyball. “We worked hard all season and it was fun to share the success with my lifelong Palisades friends. Max and I both started on the defensive front and it was great to tough it out together in the trenches. I strongly believe our team has the potential to continue its success and win a CIF championship.”

Thomas was the Cubs’ starting quarterback and threw for 165 yards and four touchdowns in the first half alone in Loyola’s season finale, a 61-8 rout of La Canada St. Francis.

“It’s awesome to be on this team with so many friends I’ve grown up with,” Thomas said after a 41-8 victory at Cathedral on October 19.

“I like being the leader and doing my part to make the offense better. I’ve got lots of talent around me.”

Loyola’s varsity squad reached the semifinals of the Southern Section Division 6 playoffs but by the time the current crop of Palisades boys graduates the Cubs are primed to win their first CIF title since 2005.

Rounding out the Corpus Christi contingent are receiver/cornerbacks Sutton Culp, Beau Schinto, Johnny McNown and Nolan Freyer; running back/defensive backs Aydan Martin and Nate Murphy and lineman Dhilan Martin. Representing Calvary Christian are Thomas; receiver/cornerbacks Grady Winget and Ayden LeRoy; tailback/cornerback Matt Sun; and receiver/linebacker Luke Connon. Running back/cornerbacks Charlie Kline and Brendan O’Malley hail from St. Matthew’s.       

In becoming the Cubs’ first 9-0  frosh team since 1978, this year’s  group posted two shutouts and came within 30 points of breaking the record total of the 2018 frosh squad that finished 9-1 and won the Mission League. This season’s frosh team won by an astounding margin of 35 points per contest.