It’s not a stretch to say that Saint Stephen’s football has set a standard of excellence since becoming a founding member of the Sunshine State Athletic Association in 2008. Since the 2015 season, the Falcons have reached the league’s championship game six times and collected three titles (2016, 2017, 2022).

Between the 2015-19 seasons under former Head Coach Tod Creneti, SSES posted a 50-7 record, including winning 24 consecutive games from August 2016 to September 2018. The Falcons made four consecutive appearances in the SSAA Florida Bowl (2015-18) and won back-to-back independent state championships in 2016 and 2017. SSES fell one win short in 2019 of making a fifth straight trip to the Florida Bowl. In nine seasons under Creneti, the Falcons posted a 68-32 record.

A.J. Brown, a former Creneti assistant, replaced his mentor in 2020 and led SSES to the SSAA Class 5A title in 2022. That season, following a 1-5 start, the Falcons ripped off five consecutive victories to win their third SSAC crown in six years. Saint Stephen’s again advanced to the 5A championship game in 2023 before falling short of a repeat against Mount Dora Christian Academy. Brown posted a 20-15 record in four seasons and another former Creneti assistant, Chris Valcarcel, has taken over the head coaching duties for the 2024 season.

The program’s run of success has been the culmination of a journey that seemed almost unimaginable when the program was re-launched in 2006 after a 32-year hiatus.

Despite its brief football history, Saint Stephen’s has also had great success creating opportunities for its student-athletes at the collegiate level. In 10 of the past 12 years, at least one Falcon has moved on to a NCAA Division I FBS or FCS program: Tim Nutter (Furman/2013), Bradley Beazant (Rice/2014), Wyatt Knopfke (Boston College/2015), Jacob Westberry (Fresno State/2016), Josh Stevens (Georgetown-Delaware/2017), Sydney Brown (Illinois/2018), Chase Brown (Western Michigan-Illinois/2018), Dylan Davis (Furman-Illinois-Marshall/2020), Cam Vining (Army-UCF/2020), D.J. Clark (Stetson/2021), Cole Rogers (Bryant/2022) and Jacob Clulow (Mercyhurst/2024).

Chase and Sydney Brown made school history in 2023 when they became the first former Falcons chosen in the NFL draft – Sydney in the third round by the Philadelphia Eagles and Chase in the fifth round by the Cincinnati Bengals. Saint Stephen’s grad Josh Stevens (Chiefs) and former student-athlete Austin Fort (Broncos) have been free-agent invitees to NFL camps.