St. Mary's defense threw a series of devastating counter punches to help the top-ranked Cardinals defeat Lindsay Holy Family 22-8 Thursday in the Class D2 eight-man state football championship game at Memorial Stadium.

"We've been told since we were first on the team that if someone kicks you in the butt, then you get up and kick their butts harder," said Kiel Neumann, St. Mary's linebacker.

"We'll get a new sign outside of O'Neill now, too, because the last time we won was 1984 and that old sign is pretty worn out," said Neumann, who led his team with 17 tackles and an interception.

The new sign might resemble a stop sign for the way St. Mary's stymied the high-powered Holy Family offense.

Holy Family (11-2) tied the game on a touchdown by Nick Kurtenbach with 10:22 left in the first half.

St. Mary's regained the lead on a 31-yard touchdown run by quarterbackMike Simons with 9:18 left in the third quarter.

The Cardinals prevented any comeback by intercepting three Holy Family passes and recovering two Holy Family fumbles the rest of the game.

"Turnovers killed us," said Holy Family Coach Rusty Rautenberg. "We picked the wrong day to have our worst offense, but a lot of that was St. Mary's defense. They did a lot of slanting with their tackles and that kept Neumann free to get to our backfield and make all those plays on defense."

St. Mary's senior defensive lineman Ryan Hickey caused a Holy Family fumble and Cardinals senior safety Dan Haggerty recovered the ball at the Cardinals' 1-yard line with 5:41 left.

"That last fumble reallly hurt," Rautenberg said. "We didn't get our running game going until late in the game and it was so windy, it was hard to pass. Then, we get going and fumble."

Nuemann said pride in the St. Mary's defense helped halt the Holy Family offense.

"Big plays, big scores really get us going on defense," he said. St. Mary's limited Holy Family to 131 yards rushing and 48 yards passing well below the Bulldog's season average of 309 yards a game. "We really don't want to give up anything. St. Mary's gave up an average of 5.3 points a game and held 11 of 13 opponents to one touchdown or less.

"I think we might have been a team to give up a couple of touchdowns last year but this team reacts so well to challenges, they respond to adversity well," said St. Mary's Coach Tony Allen, a Lincoln Pius X graduate.

"The defense got us the ball back or came up with a big play for us every time we needed one this year and today was no different," he said.

Neumann had three tackles for losses, while Simons had 15 tackles and two for losses. Haggerty had two interceptions.

"About half of this team was born in 1984, the last time we won the state championship, so we thought we owed it to that team and all the teams since then to win this," said Haggerty.