Conquerors again: Trinity Christian defeats Champagnat for ninth FHSAA football title

TALLAHASSEE | Treyaun Webb and Darnell Rogers etched their names into Florida's championship history Thursday night, and after the clock struck zero, Trinity Christian head coach Verlon Dorminey knew where the running backs would be celebrating.

"They're probably hugging their offensive linemen right now," Dorminey said. "They did a great job. They took over the second half."

Double the yardage, double the fun for Trinity's running backs.

A rise to cloud nine for the Trinity Christian trophy case.

And, after a roller coaster of a 2021 season, victory for V-Man.

Junior Webb and sophomore Rogers unleashed a one-two combination to remember, carrying the Trinity Christian train to its ninth Florida High School Athletic Association football championship in a 41-23 defeat of Hialeah Champagnat Catholic Thursday night at Gene Cox Stadium.

Webb pounded the heart of the line for 173 yards and two touchdowns. Rogers slashed and dashed for 173 yards of his own, plus a trio of scores, to ignite the full-scale fireworks show in the Tallahassee night.

This year, they did it for Dorminey, back with the team after an illness knocked him off the field for a portion of the Conquerors' playoff run. Instead of his accustomed post on the sideline through 31 years and 306 wins, Dorminey spent the Nov. 26 regional final against Quincy Munroe trying to follow the playoff action from a hospital bed, with no certainty when he might return to the game.

Trinity ensured his 300-win season closed as a winner. The nine-time state champion now ranks second in FHSAA history to Corky Rogers, victor in 10 championships at Bolles.

"We did all this for V-Man," linebacker Caden Morrell said. "Without him, we're nothing."

In a battle of freshman quarterbacks whose meteoric rise shaped the Class 2A season — Colin Hurley for Trinity Christian, Ennio Yapoor for Champagnat — it was Trinity's tailbacks who grabbed center stage.

Recruiting angle:Trinity Christian's backfield could be most talented in the state in 2022

Key matchups:Trinity Christian vs. Hialeah Champagnat in FHSAA Class 2A football final

How they got there:Trinity Christian rallies past Orlando Christian Prep in semifinal

The legend of Playoff Treyaun Webb — 336 yards in an injury-hobbled regular season, 856 in a postseason campaign for Jacksonville football's history books — added one more chapter.

Yet not so long ago, title No. 9 seemed far away for Trinity.

Ten weeks earlier, Dorminey had stood on the sideline, watching the clock tick away on a running-clock 35-0 rout at the hands of Bolles. The Conquerors had stumbled through October, losing four of their last five in the regular season, raising the inevitable questions: Was this Trinity team really ready to bring home another championship?

"I think our kids really grew up a lot after that [Bolles loss] ...notoriously, we're not good early," Dorminey said. "We're always good later, just because of practice and reps and figuring things out, and making sure we've got the right kids in the right spots. I think that's huge."

"I feel like the adversity showed us we could play through anything," Webb said. "So we played for our coach and our teammates."

Once the calendar flipped over to elimination football, though, the Conquerors turned to the Treyaun train. Webb set the tone on the Conquerors' first drive Thursday: Three carries, three sledgehammer blows of 14, 15 and 42 yards to begin the night. Rogers joined the parade, dashing through the Lions — at one point, the 174-pound sophomore pushed the pile 15 yards to convert a third-and-long — and breaking the game open in the fourth quarter.

"I just trusted my O-line," Webb said. "I was finally healthy, finally able to show everybody what I can do."

But Trinity's night wasn't all about the rushers.

In his final night in Trinity white and blue, linebacker Morrell was a human wrecking ball for the Conquerors — snapping up a fumble, hurling a Lions rusher for a loss of 8 and carrying another fumble back to the end zone only to have officials blow the play dead. Cameron Anderson added two and a half sacks and Jaykob Jones forced two turnovers as the Conquerors adjusted to limit the damage from the up-tempo, wide-open spread approach of the elusive Yapoor and the Lions.

"The running backs did their part, the receivers, the defense, everybody was good tonight," said Hurley, who played an efficient (7 of 14, 123 yards) and nearly error-free game in his first state championship start.

The Conquerors (10-4) still had to survive a fourth-quarter flurry sparked by Yapoor (21 of 34, 332 yards, 2 TD), who overcame ball-security issues to give Champagnat flickering hope.

Yapoor rushed for an 11-yard touchdown midway through the fourth quarter to narrow the gap to two scores, and then advanced across midfield on its subsequent drive, but that was as close as Champagnat (10-3) — champion in 2019 and 2020 — came to retaining its title. 

Champagnat began the night in fast-forward on offense, racing upfield at tempo and capping the drive with Yapoor's 40-yard touchdown pass to Kelvin Blount.

That lead lasted all of 69 seconds, evaporating after Webb's first touchdown. Then, Hurley delivered a 14-yard strike on a slant pattern to Seth Bialek, the Conquerors' versatile placekicker and punter, to build a 14-7 lead that never faded.

Trinity climbs into a tie for third, along with University Christian, in Florida championship history, topped by only St. Thomas Aquinas (12) and Bolles (11). They also extended Northeast Florida's streak of producing at least one state title-winner in every season dating back to 2008.

"We showed a lot of fight," Dorminey said. "There's a lot of fight in these kids."

Clayton Freeman covers high school sports and more for the Florida Times-Union. Follow him on Twitter at @CFreemanJAX.