Everett-Xaverian game had local ties

FOXBOROUGH – It was Noah Sorrento?s day Saturday at Gillette Stadium.
The shifty 5-feet-9, 185-pound tailback torched Everett High for four touchdowns as his Xaverian football team won the Division 1 state championship, 38-29.
His cousins in Lynn, the Nerich family, didn?t go to Foxborough to see the game, but they were all watching on television.
Actually, Sorrento is the son of the Nerichs? first cousin, Paul Sorrento, who lives in Norfolk (not the same Paul Sorrento who went to St. John?s Prep and later played for the California Angels and Minnesota Twins).
The Nerich?s played football at St. Mary?s, with the youngest, Mark, winning the award for being The Item?s Offensive Player of the Year when he was a senior.
The extended family is also athletic. Rich Gannon, and his sons, from Saugus ? all of whom were football stars ? are also cousins.
If there was a subplot to Saturday?s MIAA state championship games in Foxborough (the MIAA has decided to eschew the “Super Bowl” because this new system crowns only one state champion, statewide, over six divisions) it was that “the South shall rise again.”
All six championships were won by South sectional schools: Xaverian, Marshfield, Dartmouth, Holliston, Abington and Cohasset.
This is the second year of the latest MIAA format. Last year, of the four divisions contested statewide (Divisions 1 and 3 are Eastern Mass only), there was a 2-2 split. Eastern Mass teams Mansfield and Bishop Fenwick won in Divisions 2 and 5; and Worcester?s Doherty Memorial High and Littleton in Divisions 4 and 6, respectively. (Cohasset got its revenge against Littleton Saturday.)
North Shore teams that fell by the wayside in the MIAA football playoffs can be comforted by the fact that the teams that beat them were part of the South Sectional sweep. Holliston had little trouble defeating Wahconah, 43-0, and the Panthers similarly dismantled Lynnfield two weeks earlier in the state semifinal in Lowell.
Similarly, Abington easily handled Northbridge ? which lost last year to Bishop Fenwick ? 36-6. The Green Wave had a much tougher time two weeks ago against Fenwick before pulling away late in the game.
St. John?s Prep might feel differently. The Eagles lost to both Everett and Xaverian. They were a third-and-17 conversion away from possibly wrestling that North crown away from the Crimson Tide. Yet, the loss at Xaverian on Thanksgiving was more decisive (34-13).
The marquee game was undoubtedly Everett-Xaverian. They were the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the state for most of the season, and the Crimson Tide?s only defeat was at the hands of the Hawks in Westwood.
Saturday?s game started out as if the last team with the ball would win. The Tide and the Hawks traded touchdowns twice, before Xaverian began pulling away in the second quarter. A last-second field goal by Xaverian?s Joe Graziano made it 31-14 at the half, with Everett getting the ball to start the third quarter.
But Everett hung tough. Jordan McAfee and Lukas Denis connected from 21 yards out that came after a Xaverian fumble, and then Nick Orekoya ran one in from the 4-yard line, with Luis Cardona adding the two-point conversion.
At that point, even Xaverian?s Charlie Stevenson admitted he was panicking.
?I don?t know about anyone else,” he said. “But I was ? a little.”
But he knew enough not to give in to it.
?We?d been running the ball well,” he said. “We just had to get back to doing that. We got a couple of nice runs to start that next drive, and it settled us down. We got back into doing what we do best.”
And Sorrento, who got six touches out of the seven plays, took care of the rest, with a 22-yard touchdown run.That wasn?t it, though. In keeping with the rest of the game, Everett answered back, and seemed poised to score again until Xaverian?s Coby Tippett (son of former Patriot Andre Tippett) spectacularly intercepted McAfee deep in Hawk territory to preserve the win.