LONG BEACH \u2014 For the second week in a row, the Cathedral Catholic High School football team fell behind early in a championship game.<\/p>\n
And for the second consecutive week, the Dons had an answer. Cathedral Catholic scored 28 straight points en route to a 42-21 win over Los Alamitos in Friday\u2019s Division 1-AA Southern California regional championship at Veterans Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Dons are scheduled to play Northern California champion Folsom next weekend at Saddleback College for the state championship, but that may change. Saddleback is in the California Community College football playoffs and would host a championship game Saturday with another victory; in that case, the CIF state office would secure an alternate site.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s win came a week after Cathedral Catholic trailed Carlsbad 16-0 before rallying to a 20-16 victory for the CIF San Diego Section Open Division title.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting behind early certainly isn\u2019t something we like, but Los Al has a super-fast, up-tempo offense. We haven\u2019t seen anything like that, and it took a little time to figure it out,\u201d Dons coach Sean Doyle said. \u201cWe were flipping our cornerbacks and doing some different things. Finally, we decided to play defense \u2026 and it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Los](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/OCR-L-HSFB-LOSAL-1206_04.jpg\")
Los Alamitos Kamden Tillis (8) holds onto the ball on the 10-yard line as Cathedral Catholic\u2019s Jordyn Fitzpatrick (3) and Cade Smith (1) moves in to stop him during the first half of the CIF Southern California Division 1-AA Regional final, December 5, 2025, at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach.
\n(Photo by Steven Georges, Contributing Photographer)<\/p>\n
Cathedral Catholic answered with an eight-play, 52-yard drive after recovering an onside kick.Honor Fa\u2019alave-Johnson went the final 13 yards for the score on a fourth-down-and-3 play.<\/p>\n
Los Alamitos put together another 10-play drive, this time going 72 yards.<\/p>\n
The Dons drew even wirth 2:06 to play in the half, with Fa\u2019alave-Johnson going the final yard to cap a 47-yard drive.<\/p>\n
Los Alamitos drove to the Dons\u2019 9 with 11 seconds to play in the half, but two passes into the end zone were incomplete and a 26-yard field attempt sailed wide.<\/p>\n
Cathedral Catholic (11-2) struck quickly to open the second half, with quarterback Brady Palmer hitting Isaac Cook with a 56-yard scoring pass.<\/p>\n
After forcing a punt, the Minnesota-bound Palmer found a wide-open Cook for a 79-yard TD.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsaac Cook is the best receiver in the county,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cWe had a couple of scramble plays, but we have such a good chemistry that I know where he\u2019ll be if the play breaks down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Los Al drove again, but Asofa Lauifi stuffed the Griffins\u2019 ballcarrier yard loss on fourth down.<\/p>\n
Palmer then drove his team 99 yards on 15 plays, using up nearly nine minutes. This time, Palmer flipped a short pass to Fa\u2019alave-Johnson who turned it into a 20-yard TD.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely the turning point in the game,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cIt was huge. All we really wanted to do after making the stop was eat up some time. We did that, and scored, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palmer completed 16 of 21 passes for 306 yards and four TDs, finding Cook on a 9-yarder late in the game.<\/p>\n
Cook had seven catches for 213 yards.<\/p>\n
\u201cLos Al is a really good team, but we thought we might be able to hit \u2019em with a big play or two,\u201d Cook said. \u201cA couple of times, Brady had to scramble out of trouble, but I just worked my way to get open. And he found me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fa\u2019alave-Johnson had 28 carries for 135 yards and a pair of TDs. He also caught five passes for 68 yards and a score.<\/p>\n
\u201cLos Al was bringing its safeties up to stop the run, so it was tough going for Honor,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cBut his banging away opened up the passing game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday afternoon\u2019s Interstate 5 closure turned Cathedral\u2019s commute north into a three-hour ordeal.\u00a0 The team had food in a separate truck that was an hour behind the team.<\/p>\n
Cathedral Catholic 42, Los Alamitos 21<\/p>\n
Cathedral Catholic \u00a07 \u00a0 \u00a0 7 \u00a0 \u00a014 \u00a0 \u00a014 \u2013 42 <\/strong><\/p>\n Los Alamitos 14 \u00a0 \u00a0 0 \u00a0 \u00a0 0 \u00a0 \u00a0 7 \u2013 \u00a0 21 <\/strong><\/p>\n LA \u2013 \u00a0Ibarra 28 pass from Creason (Hofland kick)<\/p>\n CC \u2013 Fa\u2019alave-Johnson 13 run (Bernstein kick)<\/p>\n LA \u2013 Creason 2 run (Hofland kick)<\/p>\n CC \u2013 Fa\u2019alave-Johnson 1 run (Bernstein kick)<\/p>\n CC \u2013 Cook 56 pass from Palmer (Bernstein kick)<\/p>\n CC \u2013 Cook 79 pass from Palmer (Bernstein kick)<\/p>\n CC \u2013 Fa\u2019alave-Johnson 20 pass from Palmer (Bernstein kick)<\/p>\n LA \u2013 Tillis \u00a047 run (Hofland kick)<\/p>\n CC \u2013 Cook 9 pass from Palmer (Bernstein kick)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH \u2014 For the second week in a row, the Cathedral Catholic High School football team fell…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":428256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3102,1370,3549,7264,62,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-428255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-high-school-sports","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-top-stories-sdut","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115671348824461039","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}