By Ray Hamill — It was a week neither the St. Bernard’s Crusaders nor Preston Killingsworth will forget any time soon.
The St. Bernard’s football team traveled to Michigan to play Sacred Heart Academy on Thursday and came away with a dominating 46-0 win.
With the victory, they improved to 3-0 on the season, but more importantly this is a team that is showing plenty of improvement week to week and looks poised to compete for a first-ever outright Pacific League championship in football this fall.
And that impressive start to the new campaign makes St. Bernard’s football our choice for Team of the Week, edging out some other very worthy candidates this week, including the Arcata volleyball team, the College of the Redwoods football team, the Ferndale High football team and the South Fork football team, all of whom enjoyed big weeks.
Head coach Matt Tomlin described his team’s win in Michigan as “definitely our best game of the season so far.”
There were no shortage of standouts in the win, including senior quarterback Trenten Hagler, as well as the defensive line of Josh Tinkham, Asher Floyd and Teqkauri Achane, who combined to cause their hosts problems all night long.
Through the early part of the new season, the Crusaders look like they could be the most complete team in the H-DNL, although Ferndale and Fortuna fans might beg to differ.
Either way, it’s been a very impressive start to the new campaign for the Crusaders, who will look to continue that when they travel to play Hoopa on Thursday night.
Our Athlete of the Week, meanwhile, is Killingsworth, a two-sport star for Ferndale who is quickly establishing himself as one of the biggest playmakers in H-DNL football this fall.
And he’s doing so in all three phases of the game.
Killingsworth, who is also one of the best young wrestlers in the area, scored his team’s first four touchdowns of the night at Fall River in a dominating 52-0 win on Friday night.
He scored twice on offense and twice on defense, returning a pair of interceptions to the end zone, one for 54 yards and one for 60 yards.
On offense, he scored on runs of 24 and five yards, and three of his TDs came in the opening quarter.
“Killingsworth is pretty electric right now, and if you give him a little bit of space he’s getting in the end zone,” Ferndale head coach Clint McClurg said of the outstanding junior.
Through three games, Killingsworth leads the Cats in rushing yards (230), average per carry (12.1), rushing touchdowns (five), total TDs (seven) and interceptions (four).
Killingsworth and the Wildcats will try to maintain their impressive start to the season, which includes three wins and two shutouts, when they travel to play Eureka on Friday night.
