The St. Ignatius Wildcats will take on Bellarmine in the CCS DII Championship Game on Saturday, November 26th at 7:00 pm at San Jose City College. Tickets can be purchased here. 

Coach John Regalia sat down with the athletic department to reflect on the Wildcat's season thus far and speak about Saturday's Championship Game. 

Congrats on a great game versus Aptos. Are there any highlights from the game you’d like to touch on?

Overall, we played a complete game, not everything was perfect, but I thought we played a complete game where each side of the ball complimented the other. There were times when the offense needed to be complimented by the defense, and the defense made plays or stops and vice versa. The defense was on the field for a while, so the offense complimented them by putting a long drive together and scoring points or taking advantage of those opportunities. I think especially at this time of year, that's what our goal is, that's what we want to be doing, and it's gonna look different each week.

That's just how we executed throughout the game, and we had to do that against Aptos because they're different and they're good at what they do. They know who they are and they've got a system in place and they do a really good job within their system so we had to execute well.

Your team has had a strong championship run, was there a specific turnaround point during the season that got the momentum going for the team? 

If I were to look back on the season right now, what's been consistent is the work we've put in each week, and our focus has been in the right areas each week. We've seen growth from everyone, and every player is different, but everybody has grown over the course of the season, especially in their roles, and I think those roles have become more defined throughout the season. 

I think the coaches have done an awesome job of building that, and it's been a process each week. If you look in terms of games and success on the field, we had some adversity early on for a number of different reasons, but we grew through that. We got a win against Valley Christian in a shutout, and then we had a little bump in the road against Sacred Heart, but that's a great team, we played well in a lot of facets but didn't do enough. We came right back on the road against Mitty, who's very good, and we ended up getting on top of the scoreboard and winning that game. That really was the time of the season when we started to see all the adversity, hard work, and focus start to pay off. 

What's the morale like in the locker room right now?

I think the guys have great energy, I think the excitement is there, and I also think our maturity is showing. The guys know they need to stay focused, and they know when we need to be in work mode. I think we've matured a lot to be able to manage both emotions because they're both present right now.

How are you feeling about Saturday's Championship game against Bellarmine? 

Great. I think we're in a perfect spot. In terms of our players, they’re confident, they're focusing on the right things, and they have strong camaraderie and push from each other, so we're in a really good spot. We’re not playing this game to try to make up for something we didn't do the first time we played them this season, that's just not what this is about, and I think our guys know that. This is an opportunity for us to put our best together, and obviously, when you see a team twice, you’re able to pull some things from the first time around and we're definitely gonna pull from the things that we need to improve on, but our focus is purely on where we're at now and putting our best together for this Saturday.