Ending a Twenty-Year Drought
Before Gil Brooks arrived at St. Joseph's Prep in 1992, the Hawks had not won a Catholic League championship since 1977. Five seasons into his tenure, in 1997, one persistent student took matters into his own hands. Early in the week of the championship game, handwritten signs began appearing on walls all over the Prep's Girard Avenue campus: "Don't concentrate on schoolwork. Concentrate on winning the championship." Administrators kept ripping them down. The signs kept coming back.
They were sheets of paper, the kind you'd print out from a computer. They were everywhere. Must have been 100 of them. The people in the administration kept ripping them down, but the signs kept coming back. We had fun with it. It was kind of a rallying cry.
Saturday night at Northeast High, in front of 8,000 shivering fans, the Hawks stunned Archbishop Ryan 14-3 for their first Catholic League title since 1977 — a 20-year drought broken. Hundreds of SJP students stormed the field from the visiting sideline. One of them wore nothing but shorts. Another wore only a diaper. Forty minutes after the final whistle, Brooks was still on the field, still taking hugs from well-wishers.
The game itself belonged to sophomore Milton Johnson, who ran 20 times for 93 yards to finish the season with 1,032 — making him and Ryan's Joe O'Connell (1,147) the first two sophomores in Catholic League history to rush for 1,000 yards. Aaron Brown broke a 62-yard touchdown run. Jermaine Slade caught a 6-yard scoring pass from Steve Comly. Kevin Komelasky led the defense with nine tackles.
