LAKEPORT — Where the Clear Lake Cardinals finished the 2022 football season wasn’t the biggest surprise given that they came so close in 2021, losing a hard-fought game they probably should have won against St. Vincent High School of Petaluma in the North Coast Section semifinals.
No, the biggest surprise in 2022 was a resilient Clear Lake squad that overcame injuries to capture the undisputed North Central League I championship and deficits in all three of its sectional playoff games to bring home the school’s first section pennant in 24 years.
Reaching the state playoffs against Orland was the proverbial cherry on top for the Cardinals, who set a school record with 12 victories while also becoming the first Lake County team to play in a state playoff game.
And if anything set the 2022 Clear Lake team apart from all others, it was a memorable 56-55 victory over St. Vincent — yep, the same team that ended the Cardinals’ season in 2021 — in a sectional championship game that defies all description. If you weren’t there, you missed probably the game of a lifetime as the two schools exchanged leads from the opening kickoff to the final seconds when quarterback Jake Soderquist connected with wide receiver Ayden Williamson on a two-point conversion pass that was the difference.
The guy with the best seat in the house for all 14 of Clear Lake’s games, head coach Mark Cory, is the Lake County Record-Bee’s Coach of the Year for boys sports for the 2022-23 season.
No one did a better job of guiding his team from beginning to end during the recently completed high school sports season.
The road to the state playoffs wasn’t an easy for Cory and company, not that they expected it would be.
They were challenged twice by Kelseyville — once in league (43-33 win) and again in the semifinals of the Division 7 playoffs (28-22 win) — they beat St. Helena 13-7 without Soderquist in the lineup because of injury, they held off Cloverdale 22-21 in their league finale to clinch the outright NCL I title in Cloverdale, and they lost an overtime 15-14 heartbreaker at Willits late in the league campaign. In that loss, the Cardinals opted to kick the extra point instead of going for a two-point conversion after scoring a touchdown to go up 14-7 in the overtime. Willits came back with a touchdown on a fourth-down play and then won the game with a two-point conversion run.
In all three of their sectional playoff games — against Cloverdale, Kelseyville and St. Vincent — the Cardinals trailed at some point. In fact, they spotted the Eagles a 13-0 lead at Lakeport before coming back to win 47-13. The Cardinals trailed Kelseyville three times – 8-0, 16-13 and 22-20 — and St. Vincent by as many as 14 points four times — 27-13, 34-20, 41-27 and 48-34 – before pulling out win.
It was quite a season and quite the coaching job by Cory.
