The head coach from the crosstown rival gathered his players into a tight circle after defeating Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas in the title game. He lifted a cup of water, took a large gulp and hollered loud enough for the local sportswriters to hear his proclamation.
“I don’t have the bad taste in my mouth anymore!”
Palo Verde had hurled a year’s worth of bitterness back across the football field, where a sullen group from Bishop Gorman was just beginning to digest the 50-14 season-ending loss in the Sunset Regional championship game.
That humbling defeat nine years ago didn’t settle very well at Bishop Gorman. The Gaels haven’t lost to a Nevada team since.
But that’s just their local domination.
As the only Catholic high school in Southern Nevada and with an enrollment of 1,500 students, Bishop Gorman has continued to build its program into one of the toughest to beat and most visible in the nation, taking on top teams from coast to coast and still winning its past 55 games.
The Gaels will take their show back on the road Friday when they face Mater Dei at Santa Ana Stadium, the seventh consecutive season Bishop Gorman has taken on a team from the Trinity League. The Gaels are 9-0 in those games, but they’ve never faced the Monarchs.
Most humans and computers rank Bishop Gorman and Mater Dei No. 1 and No. 2 in the country this week. Combined with the evolution of social media in recent years, this might be the most heavily hyped high school football game in Orange County history.
“Both teams have athletes all over the place,” Bishop Gorman coach Kenny Sanchez told MaxPreps earlier this week. “The fans are going to get their money’s worth.”
The Gaels have won 12 straight games against teams from California since a loss to De La Salle of Concord in 2010.
Bishop Gorman hasn’t played an Orange County team outside of the five against Servite and two against Santa Margarita.
The closest Servite came to beating Bishop Gorman was in 2011, when the Gaels kicked a 39-yard field goal with 1:03 left to win 31-28 on their home field.
Bishop Gorman traveled to Saddleback College to play Santa Margarita in 2013 and escaped with a double-overtime victory. The Eagles rallied from 10 points down in the final six minutes of regulation to tie the score, then missed a field goal that would have won the game in the first overtime. Santa Margarita missed another field goal in the second overtime that sealed Bishop Gorman’s 34-31 victory.
A month later, Bishop Gorman would notch the first win on its current winning streak.
Like any program, the Gaels have experienced their share of ups and downs in their history.
Frank Nails, a member of the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame, led Bishop Gorman to its first large-school state title in 1970. The Gaels had a student-body of approximately 500 at the time, which made them vulnerable against large public high schools such as Rancho and Western.
Dave Gerber took over in 1972 and led Bishop Gorman to two more state championships before handing the reigns to his brother, Chuck, who won another three state titles before departing in 1987.
Horace Smith, a longtime football coach at Western and Bonanza high schools, said those were some of the toughest teams to play against.
“All I know is, when they turned up the lights on Friday night, and you were playing Bishop Gorman and one of the Gerbers, you had better pull up on your chin strap one notch tighter,” Smith told the Las Vegas Sun in 2009.
That was the year administrators at Bishop Gorman decided to go a different direction following the one-sided loss to Palo Verde and hired Tony Sanchez from California High School in San Ramon. Sanchez had turned California’s program around in just five years.
Sanchez wasted no time implementing his new style, leading the Gaels to 15-0 mark in 2009, including a 38-28 victory against Palo Verde in the rematch. That was the only team to finish within 24 points of Bishop Gorman that season.
Sanchez posted an 84-6 record and won a state title in all six seasons before he accepted the head coaching position at Nevada Las Vegas in 2014.
As the Gerber’s did before them, the Gaels kept the head coaching position in family and hired Tony’s brother, Kenny, to take over the program.
Bishop Gorman has continued to roll, posting a 30-0 record under Kenny Sanchez and three more state titles.
Any bad taste from the loss to Palo Verde nearly nine years ago has long since been washed away by a cascade of victories.
None of those wins came against Mater Dei, but the Monarchs are certainly aware of the task at hand.
They’d like nothing more than to play spoiler.
GAME OF THE WEEK PREVIEW
Mater Dei vs. Bishop Gorman
