A double crown: both Raiders sides finish 2025 as champions
Varsity took the Anavets Bowl and the junior varsity took the Home Run Sports Bowl. Two finals, two titles, one season.
Oak Park finished the 2025 season with both of its sides holding a championship. The varsity Raiders beat the Dakota Lancers 22–17 in the Anavets Bowl; the junior varsity beat the Dakota Lancers JV 48–21 in the Home Run Sports Bowl. Both finals were against the same club.
The two runs looked different. Junior varsity went through the regular season unbeaten at 6–0, scoring 268 points and conceding 62, then won a semi-final 37–2 before the final. Varsity lost once, 28–16 at home to the St Paul’s Crusaders in September, and answered it by winning everything that followed — 45–6 in the quarter-final, 46–6 in the semi-final, and the bowl itself.
The margin in the final was the closest game either side played after September. Seventeen points is more than Dakota had managed against Oak Park at any point in the previous season, and the varsity defence had not been asked a question like it all year.
For a club that lost both of its 2024 finals — the varsity 11–3 and the junior varsity 39–33, both to Dakota — winning both in the same season against the same opponent is the answer to a specific question the programme had been carrying for twelve months.