The call was in their back pockets, waiting for the moment when circumstances were just right.

And when that time arrived Friday, Todd Rogalski and his St. Thomas Academy teammates executed perfectly.

Less than a minute after a game-tying touchdown, Rogalski blocked an Andover punt, giving his team possession of the ball at the Huskies’ 21-yard line with 38 seconds to play.

Three plays later, classmate Dominic Baez scored on a 10-yard run, giving the Cadets a season-opening, come-from-behind 21-14 road victory in a clash of two of the state’s top four teams in Class 5A a year ago.

“We practice for that,” said the junior Rogalski, whose team fell 34-31 to Chanhassen in the state title game in 2023, but lost key contributors like running back Savion Hart (now at Georgetown) and quarterback Maximus Sims (now at Minnesota State-Mankato). “We’ve got that one special call. I saw their splits were wide, so I just timed the snap and ran right through there. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the ball.

“It was a big moment. We didn’t want OT.”

It helps that Marwan Maalouf, the former special teams coordinator for the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts and Minnesota Vikings, is now the director of admissions at St. Thomas Academy and helping on head coach Travis Walch’s staff.

“He and our defensive coordinator said, ‘We’re going to have one pressure this week that we think can get home,’” Walch said. “They didn’t spend a lot of time on it, but what they did well is put our best players in the spots to make the play. That credit all goes to Marwan Maalouf and Joe Ties.”

The Cadets (1-0) were only in position to make such a play because of a huge fourth-quarter scoring drive kept alive on a 36-yard pass from senior quarterback Chase Young to junior Avery Buckner on 3rd-and-20 at the St. Thomas Academy 1-yard line.

From there, the offense kept moving, scoring on a 1-yard quarterback sneak by Young with 1:10 to play. The ensuing extra point tied the score 14-14.

“That one play changed everything for us,” Young said of Buckner’s catch. “We knew we could run the plays. Our coaches had confidence in us. There was never a doubt in our minds. But we needed a little spark to ignite the flame and that’s what that was.”

The game was tied 7-7 at halftime, but Andover retook the lead when senior quarterback Hudson Maynard scored on a 2-yard run with 4:42 to play in the third quarter.

“This was a learning experience,” said Huskies junior linebacker Nolan LaPointe, whose team beat St. Thomas Academy 55-29 in the season opener last year and advanced all the way to the state semifinals before falling to Chanhassen.

“You’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some. Sometimes you learn more from losing than winning. We just have to move on to next week.”

The Cadets, meanwhile, have made something of a habit of coming-from-behind, erasing a 23-0 deficit to beat Alexandria 42-30 in the state semifinals last season.

“I remember saying at the time that was a legacy win for a lot of reasons,” Walch said. “Our kids know now it can get this bad against that team and we can still find a way.

“We have belief based on what happened last year. This a brand-new team and you never know if they’re going to be able to carry through with the same effort. But they did. And that’s when you start saying it’s not just about having a great team last year. But maybe we’re really starting to build a great program.”

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