Both Bellarmine and Mitty have some work to do to get back to solid annual competitive strength. SI and its two SF siblings are what they are, football-challenged for a variety of reasons, although SI is clearly a step ahead of Riordan and SHC on the gridiron. On the other hand, Serra and Coach Walsh made serious hay during the pandemic shutdown. Without being outright bald about it, Walsh did a stunning marketing job in the long lead-up to the re-opening of outdoor prep sports. The guy was everywhere in print newspapers and on TV, radio and the internet, promoting his cause of re-starting outdoor athletics (football at the top, of course), all the while wearing his familiar Serra gear and making no bones about where he worked and coached. He is a born salesman. He is absolutely the primary enrollment generator on West 20th Avenue now. Fully 20 percent of the Serra student body plays football, drawn there primarily due to Walsh and the heavily promoted success of his football program and his ever-growing youth flag football camps/leagues. Walsh has created a football monster in San Mateo. One can only imagine what the nearby public school football coaches (many of whom are severely limited by ongoing pandemic rules, nervous administrators/trustees, changing demographics and other negative factors) are thinking these days as Walsh, hired way back in 2001, and Serra keep on rolling along in a non-stop marketing blitz. Mills, for example, can't even find enough players to field a team this spring and under-manned South San Francisco is in the midst of a grim, historic 23-game losing streak. Make no mistake, Walsh and Serra are there to happily pick up the pieces going forward.
