The North Catholic football season that wrapped up Friday night at Mars in the WPIAL Class A semifinals with a 14-7 loss to Rochester was adorned with impressive wins, memorable individual performances and a run that resulted in the closest the school has come to winning a District 7 championship.

But all that may have never happened if not for one regular-season win back in week three.

Without the Trojans' 20-14 win against Springdale on Sept. 18, there may have been no outright conference title, no first-round thumping of Jefferson-Morgan or no 24-13 win in a rematch against Springdale that sent the Trojans to the semifinals.

North Catholic entered the 2009 season highly regarded. It had a number of returning starters at the skill positions from a team that reached the WPIAL quarterfinals a year ago.

But two weeks into the season, the Trojans were still searching for a win. Two non-conference setbacks to Serra Catholic and Laurel had coach Bob Ravenstahl's squad at 0-2 heading into Eastern Conference play.

"Those first couple of games, that was my fault as a coach," Ravenstahl said. "I don't know if we were game ready."

The Eastern Conference opener against Springdale, which defeated North Catholic, 14-7, last season, had the potential to derail North Catholic's season by mid-September. The Trojans responded with a 20-14 victory against the Dynamos.

"That was a big win, probably the biggest win we had all year," Ravenstahl said. "Once we got through the first Springdale game, I knew we had a good team."

The win got North Catholic moving to a nine-game winning streak, an outright Eastern Conference title and a No. 4-seed in the Class A playoffs. The winning streak stretched all the way to the semifinals where the Trojans fell short in a gutsy effort against Rochester, the state's top-ranked Class A team.

The Trojans' offense generated numerous scoring opportunities throughout the game. It scored a touchdown on their opening drive of the second half and drove the ball into the Rochester red zone three other times. The North Catholic defense contained the Rams for most of the game and came up with numerous stops late in the game to keep within a touchdown.

"Based on the competition, it probably was the best performance [all season] by our defense," Ravenstahl said. "The kids were determined more than anything and on offense the running game picked up in the second half and it allowed us to do a lot of different things."

The running game was spearheaded by Julian Durden. A sophomore running back, he emerged as one of the top Class A backs in the WPIAL early in the season but Friday night he put on a show against the second-ranked defense in Class A.

He scored North Catholic's lone touchdown on a 9-yard run and made a number of highlight-reel runs and receptions.

"Words cannot describe how Julian played [Friday night]," Ravenstahl said. "He was phenomenal."

It was junior quarterback Martin Long coming up big throughout the game. Although he threw a few costly interceptions, he kept drives alive with his legs and spread the ball around to different receivers.

"Martin is a true competitor," Ravenstahl said. "I told him never second-guess yourself. He makes plays a lot of quarterbacks can't make."

Long and Durden will both return and be joined with a talented group of underclassmen who were ready to start working toward next season after walking off the turf at Mars Friday night.

"A lot of young kids stepped up," Ravenstahl said. "We are going to be pretty good next year. We are looking forward to it."

Thirteen seniors who started in the program as freshmen, just as Ravenstahl was taking over, will graduate from this team. They reached the playoffs four consecutive years.

The senior class was headlined by offensive playmaker Matt Fedzen, who moved from tailback to slotback this season with the arrival of Durden, linemen Jake Szramowski, Tim Wood and wide receivers Alex Kline, Jesse Long, Bill Frizzi and Kory Gribbin.

"These are the kids who have been with our staff for four years," Ravenstahl said. "They put the program back on the map.

"This is a great senior class, they gave tremendous effort. They dug down on Friday night and gave effort I don't think they even thought they could give."

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