St. John Bosco-Mater Dei: Rivalry's intensity on full display

By Luca Evans

April 19, 2021 3:30 AM PT

To coaches Bruce Rollinson and Jason Negro, the storied Santa Ana Mater Dei–Bellflower St. John Bosco rivalry is founded upon a mutual respect.

There was, however, the usual bitterness to the rivalry at times during Mater Dei’s 34-17 victory Saturday night over the Braves.

Penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct flew when players smacked each other after the whistle. At the end of the game, players needed to be restrained after tossing personalized insults across an invisible divide.

After the season was cut short by COVID, outside linebacker Raesjon Davis chose to finish his senior year. Davis is a Mater Dei senior linebacker who will attend USC on a football scholarship.

“Honestly, I was a little disappointed in both teams,” said Negro, St. John Bosco’s coach. “The rivalry is not about trash talk, and the rivalry is not about antics and things like that.”

That rivalry is a complex one, complicated by the fact that the schools are just a 30-minute drive apart. Many friendships exist across the St. John Bosco-Mater Dei battle lines. Yet on the field, there’s often little love lost between the programs. That’s a characteristic that’s existed for years, according to Logan Loya, a UCLA receiver and Bosco alumnus in the class of 2020.

“It’s not a dislike,” Loya said. “It’s a hatred between us.”

St. John Bosco wide receiver Logan Booher is upended by Mater Dei's Kassius Ashtani and Domani Jackson.

The atmosphere, despite being limited in pure physical size due to COVID-19 restrictions, was charged despite the crowd at Santa Ana Stadium being limited to 3,000 attendees rather than its usual 9,000, event staff member John Simpson said. Tensions were visible before the game with posturing between the two teams and their fans.

However, it was the Monarchs’ cooler heads that eventually prevailed in a game that, according to Rollinson, was bound to get chippy.

In the second quarter, Bosco receiver Jode McDuffie slapped Mater Dei cornerback Shu’yab Brinkley on the helmet after an incompletion. While visibly frustrated in the moment, Brinkley was accepting of the interaction after the game, saying he shook hands with McDuffie.

“Everybody’s going to talk a little smack in football,” said Brinkley, who had an interception in the victory. “We were just competing — that’s how this game gets sometimes. Sometimes, your emotions get the best of you.”

As Mater Dei worked its way into a 24-17 lead in the third quarter after being down 14-7 in the first, Bosco was hit with a rash of pass interference penalties. Each kept the Monarchs’ humming offense and freshman quarterback Elijah Brown on the field, a drive that culminated in an eight-yard touchdown pass to senior receiver Josiah Zamora.

With each penalty came increasingly demonstrative reactions from Bosco players and coaches. At one point, players on the sidelines waved their hands to the crowd to encourage “boos.”

“I want to hit somebody so bad, bro,” a St. John Bosco player on the sideline said in the fourth quarter.

Mater Dei receiver Josiah Zamora hangs on to make a touchdown catch while defended by St. John Bosco's Jaxon Harley.

Senior Braves safety Jordan Walker was a bundle of energy heading into the final game of his high school career, dancing alongside teammates next to a massive speaker that thumped Lud Foe’s “Recuperate.” Yet a half-hour after the loss, all he could muster was a sad smile in disappointment. The Braves had beaten themselves, Walker felt.

“Coming out, being excited, especially for a big rivalry game — I’m not even going to lie, you actually grow to almost basically hate people in rivalries,” Walker said. “But bringing that energy out with hate, your head goes to a different spot … [there was] a lot of sloppiness.”

As the clock wound down to zeroes, Mater Dei players on the sidelines began to spray water from Gatorade bottles high in the air, continuing to do so while rushing the field. Negro said he thought the celebration was “a little excessive.”

“I’m not too fired up about the water thing, but I know where that came from,” Rollinson said postgame. “It’s a rivalry now that Jason and I are both very proud of, that we built these national powers.”

Amid the high emotions of the night, one prevailing fact remained — the miracle that this caliber of a game happened amid the pandemic.

To Rollinson, Saturday represented a proud goodbye to 21 seniors who’d stuck it out with him through the ups and downs of the past 15 months — four of whom came back despite guaranteed college scholarships, he said.

To Brinkley, it represented the chance to play in the biggest game of his career, after transferring from Northeast High in Philadelphia before the season and adapting to a new program during a pandemic. To Negro, it represented a culmination of a last 15 months that showed him the resilience that young people can have.

“As bad as I feel right now, I wouldn’t change it for the world,” Negro said postgame of the 2021 season.

Rollinson plans to meet with medical experts to determine when to begin training again for a fall season that begins in four months, with Mater Dei’s first game of the 2021-22 school year slated for Aug. 20 against Corona Centennial, another state powerhouse.

St. John Bosco’s schedule hasn’t been released, according to Negro, but the rivals will likely meet again sometime in late September for a league game and the likely rematch in the Southern Section Division 1 championship game, as has happened four consecutive seasons before the pandemic.

Walker said he hoped the loss would inspire hunger in the younger members of the team he’s leaving behind upon graduation. Similarly, Negro hoped it would leave a “bitter taste” in his program’s mouth.

“It was the little things that hurt us tonight,” Negro said. “It was the penalties, it was our composure, it was the pass interference [calls], it was the fumbles, it was the interceptions. Those types of things are uncharacteristic of a championship team like ours, and we’ve got to clean that up.”