M-A Vikings 10U football team enjoys historic win, places fourth in the nation at Pop Warner Super Bowl

The M-A Vikings earned a 24-20 win over the New Britain Raiders of Connecticut in the Dec. 3 opener of the Pop Warner Super Bowl 10U Division I tournament, punching their ticket to the final four. The Vikings were eliminated in the semifinals Dec. 7 by the Proviso Bills of Illinois. But the Vikings’ victory in the tournament opener was one for the ages.

“That first game was the storybook ending,” M-A Vikings head coach Harold Atkins said.

It couldn’t have been a more fitting stage for a storybook ending, with the game played at the auxiliary field just outside Camping World Stadium at the Universal Orlando Resort. It’s the same complex where scenes from the 1998 Adam Sandler classic “The Waterboy” were filmed. But the Vikings rivaled any Hollywood ending you could imagine in their triumph over the New Britain Raiders.

After jumping out to an 18-0 lead, the Vikings found themselves trailing 20-18 as they took their final possession of the game. Staring at a long field with five minutes to go, however, first-year quarterback Henry Chen completed a long pass to Bass “BJ” Butler, who — having already scored two previous touchdowns in the game — was brought down just shy of the end zone. The Vikings scored on the next play on a 1-yard dive by Nate Giesselman.

But more drama ensued, as the Raiders got the ball back with plenty of time to mount a comeback drive of their own — and that they nearly did.

“The problem is with that long pass play we left like four-and-a-half minutes on the clock,” Atkins said. “And they drove down, I’m talking methodically.”

The Raiders fired back by echoing the Vikings’ drive, taking the ball down to the 1-yard line. With 16 seconds remaining, the Raiders had time to run two plays. Fortunately for the Vikings, their defense showed up with the stop of a lifetime on the first play, and a botched spike play caused the clock to run out after the second.

The first-down stop was courtesy of Darius “Ray” Skipwith, who had already scored a touchdown on offense, taking a 65-yard reception to the house on the second play of the game. This time, he denied six points on defense with a game-saving tackle on a halfback dive, plugging the only gap left after defensive tackle Erik Atkins squeezed the middle: “leaving that guy nowhere to go,” Harold Atkins said.

With the clock running after the first-down stop, the Raiders committed a classic 10U mistake as, instead of spiking the ball to stop the clock, the quarterback took a knee. Amid the chaos and fanfare, the clock expired, and the Vikings celebrated their first win at a national championship tournament in their organization’s history.

“Our entire team, I’m talking players and coaches, stormed the field, going crazy,” Harold Atkins said. “It was just one of the best feelings in the world.”

It was quite a fairytale moment for a team that faced long odds to amount to anything at the start of the season. The Vikings fielded just seven players with any football experience in their opener, which they lost, before winning 12 games in a row to reach the Pop Warner Super Bowl.

But the Vikings drew well with plenty of kids signing up to give Pop Warner football a try, with applicants from East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, East Menlo Park and Los Altos.

“They registered online, they showed up,” Atkins said. “The difference this year was the parent commitment, really cerebral kids. Our coaching is what it always is. I think we put a lot of pressure on kids to learn to play football the right way. But I think it was the parents, kids and coaches meshing together.”

First-year player Amadeo Dorigo was one of the many players that propelled the Vikings to Orlando, despite entering the year with no football experience. Dorigo almost didn’t play after some consternation from his parents, Atkins said. Worried Dorigo could get hurt playing football, they called Atkins, who spent several hours on the telephone lobbying for Dorigo to play.

That he did, and he went on to learn three different positions in the secondary, as well as the wide receiver position on offense.

“That just exemplifies how he was able to master in one season all four position,” Atkins said.

The Downingtown Young Whippets of Pennsylvania went on to win the Pop Warner Division I 10U championship Dec. 10, defeating the Raiders 26-0.

The Vikings raised over $50,000 via parents and individual donors to make the trip to Orlando, Florida.