How South San Francisco went from not having a varsity team to winning the CCS Division V championship

Two years removed from having no varsity football team, South San Francisco completed a remarkable ascent Saturday with a 13-7 win over Santa Teresa for the Central Coast Section Division V championship at newly-opened MacDonald High School.

“A great win,” SSF coach Kolone Pua said. “These guys hung in there. I told them all year we can make history.”

The Warriors did it Saturday the way they’ve done it all season, with a physical style both offensively and defensively.

South City ran 67 plays from scrimmage, 55 on the ground using a throwback full-house T-formation with two tight ends for a significant portion of the game, compared to 38 total plays for Santa Teresa.

“That was the hardest hitting game I’ve ever been around,” Pua said.

The way the team’s defense has played has been the biggest factor in its success. South San Francisco (12-1) has allowed 80 points in 13 games this season, 6.2 per contest.

Six points total were allowed in the last five games of the regular season. In three playoff games the opposition has scored a combined 16 points, with the seven allowed in the championship game coming about from a blocked punt recovered in the end zone.

Santa Teresa (6-7), the defending CCS Division IV champion, also blocked a crucial extra point late in its semifinal win over Woodside. They broke through to block a South City punt at the start of the second quarter and fell on it in the end zone to take a 7-0 lead.

The Warriors responded with a 77-yard drive that concluded with a 3-yard run for a touchdown by fullback Marcus Mercurio. The snap on the conversion attempt was fumbled, leaving Santa Teresa with a 7-6 lead at halftime.

South City took the second-half kickoff and drove 74 yards in 15 plays, with Mercurio scoring on another 3-yard run.

After Santa Teresa went three-and-out, South City chewed another chunk of time off the clock, and that’s kind of the way it went the rest of the way. 

The Saints finished with 130 yards of total offense split evenly, 65 rushing and 65 passing. Their defense kept it close. Jaikob Wright and Tevita Pekipaki had sacks. Santa Teresa did a good job of keying on star running back Elijah Fields, who took a number of hard hits and had to work hard for 79 yards on 21 carries.

But Mercurio had his best game of his career, rushing 23 times for 105 yards and both touchdowns as South City amassed 208 yards rushing and 251 yards of total offense..

“No fear,” Mercurio said. “I knew my teammates had my back. We changed history and created a family.”

There was a long tradition of football excellence at South San Francisco, something the community with its working class identity took pride in. “South San Francisco The Industrial City,” the big letters on San Bruno Mountain read, is visible for miles to drivers heading north on 101.

That’s what made it so tough for so many people when the football program plummeted, going a combined 0-24 in the three seasons prior to 2021, when the school was only able to field a junior varsity team.

Former coach Frank Moro came back last year and guided the Warriors to a 6-4 record in a return to the varsity ranks, playing in the Peninsula Athletic League’s Lake Division, a bottom-tier “C” division.

This season Moro turned over the head coaching duties to Pua, a former South City player and assistant coach. And Pua made it a family affair with his two sons serving as coordinators, Kolson Pua with the defense and Kolone Isaac Pua with the offense.

The CCS title was the third in school history, following CCS Division II-North championships in 1981 and 1989. The 12 wins is a school record, eclipsing the victory total of the 11-0 team in 1989.

Next season SSF will move up to the PAL El Camino Division. But first the team will await Sunday’s CIF seeding meeting and learn who it will play in a NorCal regional game