The San Pedro girls flag football team rallied for a 20-19 win over Eagle Rock Wednesday to advance to Saturday’s first L.A. City Section Open Division championship game.
For the first time this season, the top-seeded Pirates trailed at halftime and were behind in the fourth quarter..
With 1:04 remaining in the semifinal, Shalia Coleman scored a touchdown on fourth down and Noelani Raigans converted a 2-point conversion for the win.
Jenna Ortega threw for three touchdown passes.
This was the third meeting of the season between the teams. Eagle Rock won the first contest 28-6 on Sept. 15 and San Pedro won the second game 14-8 on Sept. 25.
San Pedro (24-3) had recorded consecutive shutouts in the playoffs, first 48-0 against Los Angeles Leadership Academy and then 28-0 against Narbonne. The Pirates had five shutout wins in their last seven games.
“I told them at halftime, here is your test, to be a true champion, you have to face adversity,” San Perdo coach Victor Tuberosi said. “This is a very special group.”
San Pedro will face No. 7-seeded Birmingham Saturday at 4:30 p.m at Birmingham High. The teams haven’t met this season.
Birmingham defeated San Fernando 32-0 in the other semifinal.
“They’ve persevered all year,” Tuberosi said of his team. “Today it was raining, but this group is very family oriented, they trust each other and they believed they were going to win.
“Saturday is going to be a great matchup. We have to travel there, that’s OK. If you want to be a champion, you have to beat them there.”
Travis Burnett
A pioneer in the flag football community, Travis helped co-found the Flag Football World Championship Tour, FlagSpin and USA Flag. Featuring 15+ years of content creation for the sport of flag football, creating and managing the largest flag football tournaments on the planet, coaching experience at the youth and adult level as well as an active player with National and World Championship level experience.
