By Martin Cleary
Make room for the food.
The final potluck dinner of the St. Mark Lions High School football season was scheduled to be held on a coach bus heading for Guelph on Tuesday. While the 46 players and eight coaches filled almost all the space in the tight quarters, they needed to find room for countless boxes of pizza, multiple bunches of bananas and a variety of other energy and protein foods.
For the past two seasons, the Lions have staged a potluck dinner at the school following their final practice before the next day’s game. And the final game of their 2025 season wasn’t going to be any different, even if it had to be served on a bus heading to the school’s first OFSAA Football Bowl Series game in 19 years.
While the pizzas would serve as an early Tuesday dinner for the players and coaches, the bananas and energy/protein foods would be game-day munchies on Wednesday, when the Lions were scheduled to face the athletic and imposing Monsignor Paul Dwyer Saints of Oshawa in the National Capital Bowl at 11 a.m. on the University of Guelph Alumni Stadium field.
Parents put their names on a list and stepped forward to provide the potluck food for the six regular-season and two playoff games. The menu ranged from meatballs to lasagna to pizza.
“I see why we have great kids because they come from great families,” St. Mark head coach Andrew Castellarin said in a phone interview this week.
“Football is a big part of our community. People love football at St. Mark. There’s support from the parents and the administration and that helps to turn it into a good program.”
St. Mark is scheduled to take the field late Wednesday morning for the National Capital Bowl, which is one of nine OFSAA bowl games played over three days. This will be the third appearance for the Lions, who defeated Frontenac of Kingston 10-8 to win the National Capital Bowl in 2006, but lost to the same school 29-20 in 2001.
Schools from the National Capital Secondary School Athletic Association have participated in a total of 17 OFSAA bowl games and emerged as champions six times. The other five champions were St. Matthew in 2022 (National Capital) and 2016 (Metro Bowl), St. Peter in 2009 and 2005 (both National Capital), and Ashbury in 2018 (Independent).
Dwyer, which plays in the three-team Lake Ontario Secondary School Athletics football league and posted a 4-1 record this season (6-2 overall), will play in its seventh OFSAA bowl game. The Saints were champions at the 2024 Simcoe Bowl and the 2015 Eastern Bowl. They were finalists in 2019, 2015, 2014 and 1987.
The LOSSA football all-star team featured nine Dwyer student-athletes – running back David Nosa, wide receivers Will Pereira and Isaiah Batista Dos Santos, and offensive linemen Bradley Paciorek and Israel La Caille on offence; and defensive lineman Emmanuel Okonkwo, linebacker Jason Fowler, and defensive backs Cassius Watson and Leurrico Duncan Sampedro on defence.
The confidence level on the Manotick-based St. Mark team is high and the players are hoping to win a second provincial bowl title for their school.
“The players have a lot of pride. We fell short last year (losing the NCSSAA final to St. Joseph). But we won the junior championship (spring, 2025) and we want to keep the momentum going,” added Castellarin, who has been on the St. Mark senior coaching staff since 2001 and has been the head coach since 2017.
“We’re confident and we want to keep it going. We haven’t been to a bowl game since 2006 (under former head coach Paul Brown and assistant coach Pat Kelly).”
The Lions won a city title in 2021 but national capital teams were not permitted to play outside the region that year as the COVID pandemic lingered.
A victory for St. Mark on Wednesday would earn them some elite athletic status on campus. When the Lions won the National Capital Bowl in 2006, the school posted a team photo on a wall outside the gymnasium to commemorate the team’s success.
“If they do what we think they can do” Castellarin said there will be a second football team photo on that wall of honour.
Traditionally, the Lions have been recognized as a hard-nosed running squad. But the 2025 edition of the team is focused on the passing game.
Quarterback Dylan Danby, a Grade 11 student-athlete, is the field general and has a talented group of receivers, including senior Kohlman McIntyre and Grade 11 Danylo Ostapyk.
The defence, which posted four shutouts and only allowed seven points in six regular-season games for the undefeated Lions, features nose tackle Rohi Ogbebor and middle linebacker/captain Eddie Jaquemet, who are both in Grade 11, as well as three seniors – Sean Rennie and Theo Gonsalves at safety and Dante Di Nardo at cornerback.
“We only have four seniors,” explained Castellarin, who also has 29 players in Grade 11, eight in Grade 10 and five in Grade 9. “We needed leadership from them and they rose to the challenge. They are four great young men.
“We also have some phenomenal Grade 11 players. Some will go to (American) prep schools next year. We also have strong Grade 9 and 10 players. We’re also looking forward to a few more great years.”
Win or lose, St. Mark will close an exceptional 2025 senior football season with great memories, which include eight straight wins, a 20-17 double-overtime decision over defending champion St. Joseph Jaguars in the NCSSAA final, a snowy semifinal win over the Holy Trinity Tornadoes and pre-season bonding experiences at Camp Smitty in Eganville and a game against Selwyn House School in Westmount, PQ.
A field goal in the second overtime period allowed St. Mark to upset St. Joesph in the championship game, which featured the same two teams in 2024.
Read More: St. Mark Lions spoil St. Joseph’s quest for NCSSAA football three-peat in double-OT thriller
The Lions desperately wanted to play their semifinal on their home field, after a heavy, mid-November snowfall, and not have it moved to an artificial-turf field. The school pulled together to make it happen. Students from three different classes shovelled the snow off the field’s line markings and two coaches used a tractor and a snowblower to prepare the field.
In Week 1 of the Lions’ season, the players and coaches headed to Camp Smitty for two days and one night for team bonding, practising and a scrimmage against the Holy Trinity team. The Lions spent part of Week 2 in Montreal for an exhibition game against Selwyn House School and learned from that 34-22 loss.
“We always say our expectation is to get to the semifinals,” Castellarin said. “Anything can happen after that. We also wanted to play host to a semifinal. Overall, we wanted to win the city championship.”
The Lions put a check mark beside all those football assignments.
There’s one game remaining and the Lions are aiming for a trophy celebration, which would trigger a team photo to be posted on the school’s wall of honour right beside the 2006 championship team.
There will be no St. Mark fan bus travelling to Guelph for the National Capital Bowl. But the players and coaches who headed down the highways on Tuesday to the community known as the Royal City, likely remembered and talked about their student supporters, parents and administration as they enjoyed every slice of their potluck pizza dinner.
Martin Cleary has written about amateur sports for over 52 years. A past Canadian sportswriter of the year and Ottawa Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement in Sport Media honouree, Martin retired from full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen in 2012, but continued to write a bi-weekly “High Achievers” column for the Citizen/Sun.
When the pandemic struck, Martin created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times, via his Twitter account at first and now here at OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.
