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Patrick Birkhead | September 6, 2025
The Explorers down Salesianum in Delaware to advance to 3-0
On Friday night the La Salle College High School Explorers marched into Delaware and defeated Salesianum on their own turf. The Explorers faced a lot of resilience between and hard fighting Sallies team, sloppy penalties, and a few questionable decisions.
In this game momentum was hard to come by and early in the game it was certainly slow. The first quarter ended scoreless. To begin the second quarter, Salesianum drove down the field and Brady Nabb hit wide receiver Devin Hasan for a deep touchdown.
La Salle clapped back though, Gavin Sidwar, the senior quarterback, led La Salle into Salesianum territory. With this excellent field position Sidwar capitalized hitting his favorite target, Joey O’Brien for a touchdown to even the game at 7.
After the game O’Brien mentioned that all of his receptions from Sidwar comes from “Just playing with him for so long, we got it, and it’s just going to keep getting better.”
On the following kickoff Tysir Jones returned a kickoff for a touchdown. At this point Salesianum had all of the momentum. La Salle needed a spark, and a spark they got, Gavin Sidwar hit J.P. Oates for a quick pass over the middle, Oates turned this into a huge run after catch and managed to score. The game was now tied 14-14 and the Explorers were yet to lead going into halftime.
The 2nd half moved very slow, especially the 3rd quarter. Salesianum scored just 3 points totaling 17 which wasn’t enough to defeat La Salle. The Explorers rolled down the field on 2 occasions and Ahzir Nelson punched in 2 short touchdowns for the Explorers.
By the end of the game La Salle had the game in hand, but the Sallies fought very hard throughout the game. The La Salle defense was terrific in the 2nd half, and it was highlighted by Trey Hopkins, Lucas Johnson, Joey O’Brien, Jimmy Mahoney, and Brandon Murray.
Salesianum was constantly trying to attack Trey Hopkins with deep passes, but Hopkins stood strong knocked down a countless number of passes. For this reason, he received the game ball. Murray was also very impressive, he stepped in as a sophomore with little varsity experience and played extremely well against a talented Sallies offense.
Joey O’Brien was also very impressed by the secondary claiming, “We have a bunch of dogs, Trey Hopkins, Jim Mahoney, Lucas Johnson, all of them just give it their all. I also thought it was clutch how Brandon Murray came in and held his own.”
Although they got the win, La Salle has a lot to clean up O’Brien claimed, “You can’t be too good at something, were just trying to keep going on the right slope.”
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