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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By MARIA VERZA

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of Mexico’s most-feared drug lords, has been released from a U.S. prison after serving most of a 25-year prison sentence, authorities confirmed Friday.

A U.S. Bureau of Prisons official said Cárdenas Guillén had been released from prison and was placed in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would normally suggest he would be deported back to Mexico.

A Mexican official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said Cárdenas Guillén faces two arrest warrants in Mexico, making it likely he would be detained upon arrival.

The former head of the Gulf cartel was known for his brutality. He created the most bloodthirsty gang of hitmen Mexico has ever known, the Zetas, which routinely slaughtered migrants and innocent people.

Cárdenas Guillén was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010 and ordered to forfeit tens of millions of dollars. It was not clear why he did not serve his full sentence, but he had been extradited to the U.S. in January 2007.

The 57-year-old native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf cartel, based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.

He created the Zetas, a gang of former Mexican special forces soldiers who he recruited to become his private army and hit squad. They committed acts of terror that regularly involved slaughtering dozens of people, decapitating them or dumping heaps of hacked-up bodies on roadways.

The Zetas lived on long after Cárdenas Guillén was captured in 2003. By 2010, the Zetas had formed their own cartel, spreading terror-style attacks across Mexico as far south as Tabasco until their top leaders were killed or arrested in 2012-2013.

An offshoot of the Zetas, the Northeast cartel, continues to control the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas.

But Cárdenas Guillén’s own gang, the Gulf cartel, has become hopelessly splintered after more than a decade of bloody infighting between factions with names like The Metros, The Cyclones, The Reds and The Scorpions.

Cárdenas Guillén’s own nickname was “El Mata Amigos,” or “The one who kills his friends.”

Cárdenas Guillén’s most brazen act was when he surrounded and stopped a vehicle carrying two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and one of their informants in 1999 in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

His gunmen pointed their weapons at the agents and demanded they hand over the informant, who would almost certainly be tortured and killed. The agents toughed it out and refused, reminding him it would be a bad decision to kill employees of the DEA. Cárdenas Guillén eventually called off his gunmen, but not before reportedly saying “You gringos, this is my territory.”

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Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington, D.C.

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The Twins might not be quite where they want to be — they’d rather be leading their division than in third place as they currently sit, of course — but in the grand scheme of things, they’re where they hoped they would be.

There’s a month left to go in the regular season and they’re currently in line to win a wild card with the chance to fight for the American League Central title in September.

“That’s actually a message that I talked to our team about a few days ago,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “This is what you want. You want to be going into September in a good spot with an opportunity to play really important games throughout the month. If you do your job well, you have a chance to go to the playoffs and maybe win a World Series. That’s what we’re here for.”

Heading into Friday night’s action, the Twins were 3 1/2 games back from the division-leading Cleveland Guardians and 1 1/2 games behind the Kansas City Royals. Before the weekend started, they were 3 1/2 games ahead of the Boston Red Sox, the closest team chasing them in the wild card race, meaning they were just as close to leading the division as falling out of a playoff spot.

And, importantly, the Twins will play all of those teams in a pivotal September, facing the Royals next weekend and then Cleveland and Boston from Sept. 16-22.

September sets up to be a month of scoreboard watching within the Twins’ clubhouse.

“I think everyone would be naive to say they’re not checking out the scores in the stadium, seeing what the ribbon board says,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “We have four against Cleveland against and three against KC so we still have lots of opportunity to make up games. There’s still a month of baseball left. You look at where we’re at now … Three back or something … it could easily turn to us being three up at the end of the year.”

The Twins have the easiest schedule remaining of the three AL Central teams in contention with their opponents having a collective .484 winning percentage. Cleveland’s schedule is slightly hardest and Kansas City’s is the most difficult of the three.

Entering Friday’s action, FanGraphs gave the Twins an 84.8 percent chance of making the playoffs. So yes, this is where the Twins want to be, despite a recent spell that saw them go 2-8 in their 10 games leading up to Friday’s series opener with the Toronto Blue Jays.

“This is what you dream of when you’re working out in the offseason. This is what you want in spring training when you all get together as a team and you’re hoping for a … postseason push,” third baseman Royce Lewis said. “We’re right where we need to be, man. We’re a handful of games away and we get to face both these teams coming up soon that are ahead of us. I’m very much so looking forward to it. I know it’s in our hands.”

Briefly

Max Kepler (knee) was out of the lineup on Friday. He missed Monday’s game because of the issue but played Tuesday and Baldelli said Kepler did not feel so great after that. Baldelli said Kepler would work out on Friday and they would see how he was doing. … The manager did not have an update on Carlos Correa (foot) and Byron Buxton (hip) after Thursday’s off day, except to say Buxton is further along towards a return than Correa. … Former Twin José Berríos is scheduled to take the ball on Saturday against rookie Zebby Matthews.

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While single-family home values have continued to increase in St. Paul, the estimated market value of commercial and industrial properties, as well as apartment buildings, dipped slightly in the past year. Partly as a result, everyday St. Paul homeowners are likely to feel some sting in their property tax bills.

How much of a sting? Brace for a $200 property tax increase next year to a median-value, single-family home in St. Paul, based on combined city, county and school district property tax levies, and then add at least another $100 in higher trash, water, sewer and recycling fees.

“Next year is going to be a hard year,” said Ramsey County Board Chair Victoria Reinhardt, addressing the county board during an Aug. 27 tax trends presentation. Tax burden “is shifting to residential, more so than industrial and commercial. It goes back and forth, depending on what the values are. And we’re looking at higher (tax levy) increases with the city of St. Paul, and our cities in the suburbs, as well. School districts play a huge role in this.”

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s budget proposal includes a 7.9% increase to the city’s tax levy — or $16.5 million — the sum total of all property taxes collected in the city limits from all property types. That’s a sizable levy increase, though there have been larger ones in the past decade, even without counting years in which legal challenges forced the city to drop street maintenance fees and pay for routine street repair through general property taxes.

The St. Paul City Council has until December to approve the city budget, and changes to the property tax levy are possible. Ramsey County officials plan to make their annual “Tax Trends” presentation to the council on Sept. 11.

Based on his budget proposal, the mayor’s office has estimated that a median value St. Paul home ($275,300 in 2025) will see the city portion of their property taxes go up $133 next year. Also impacting St. Paul homeowners will be fee increases to recycling, trash, sanitary sewer, storm sewer and water charges, which taken together could add another $109 to that total.

About $300 in new taxes and fees

Combined with Ramsey County and Metropolitan Council tax levies, that median-value St. Paul home can expect at least $196 in new property taxes next year — a 5% increase — on top of the $109 in fees. Those totals are subject to change as the levies are tweaked by the time budgets are finalized in December. The St. Paul School District will issue its preliminary levy proposal on Sept. 17.

St. Paul neighborhoods are likely to experience tax levy increases differently, given that average values in different parts of the city are increasing at different rates.

“People think that this is something that we just do arbitrarily, and that is not the case at all,” said Reinhardt, noting that county assessors survey every taxable property in the county at least once every five years. “You can’t purposely inflate or deflate the value of a property.”

In St. Paul, tax increases are expected to be the greatest in Highland Park, where home values are climbing more than 5%. Downtown condo owners could see some savings as a result of home values there declining .8%. Other neighborhoods fall in the middle.

For example, a $413,000 home in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood is projected to have an estimated market value of $432,700 next year, which would be a 4.7% value increase. If the various proposed tax levies are approved in December as planned, that home’s property taxes would go up about $527, or about 8.5%.

Toward the low end, a $226,000 home in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood is projected to have an estimated market value next year of about $230,000, just a 1.5% increase. Unless proposed tax levies change greatly by December, its property taxes could go up $89, for a 2.8% tax increase.

Tax increases in the Sunray/Battle Creek/Highwood neighborhood are likely to be around $280, or 7%, while Dayton’s Bluff, which is also on the East Side, would experience a $100 increase, or 3%. Frogtown homeowners can expect property taxes to go up $178, or 6.2%. In Hamline-Midway, the tax burden would go up $276, or 7.7%.

Apartments and commercial/industrial values drop

While residential property values have picked up about 3.9% in St. Paul, commercial values have dropped 1.5%, industrial values have dropped 2.4% and apartment buildings have dropped in value by 4.5%, according to the Ramsey County assessor’s office.

The past year has been characterized by “steady growth in the residential market,” said County Assessor Patrick Chapman, in a presentation to the county board on Tuesday. Ongoing large-scale real estate development projects include Highland Bridge and The Heights in St. Paul, as well as more than 200 townhomes planned at Pioneer Commons in Little Canada.

“Development continues, and we’ve got several large projects all over the county,” Chapman said. “The industrial market is remaining strong (but) it’s kind of leveling out. Apartments are stabilizing after record growth. … Nobody is building a lot of retail lately. The office market, we’re still trying to figure out what it’s going to look like with the new hybrid work model. Conversions (from office) to residential are going to play a role in stabilizing this market scope.”

A few factors will help soften tax impacts or bolster city and county budgets. Among them, St. Paul received an $8.8 million increase in local government aid in 2024, which will stay fairly flat in 2025, increasing about $131,000. It’s still the highest allocation since 2002.

A metro-wide “fiscal disparities” program shares a certain amount of property tax revenue from commercial-industrial properties across counties. Ramsey County, which received about $50 million from the program last year, is expected to receive $56.8 million in 2025, a notable increase of 11.9%.

For the purpose of calculating taxes on their primary residence, the state allows homeowners to exclude up to $38,000 in property value on their homestead property on a sliding scale, with no exclusion for properties valued over $517,200.

Ramsey County officials noted this week that more property owners throughout the county are challenging their estimated market values in court, which is one way to seek tax relief. The number of tax petition filings has increased to more than 1,000 for taxes payable this year, compared to about 700 petitions filed for taxes payable in 2023. That’s partly a reflection of some sudden increases and decreases in commercial-industrial valuations over the past two years, Chapman said.

The city tax levy increased 3.7% last year and about 6.2% in 2022. In 2018, the city shifted how it covers routine street maintenance costs, moving some charges from individual right-of-way maintenance fees to property taxes, which are shared citywide, fueling the city’s 24% tax levy increase that year. The same shift in street maintenance continued in 2023, adding to a levy increase of 14.65%.

St. Paul levy increases by year

•2014: 0%

• 2015: 2.14%

• 2016: 1.9%

• 2017: 7.94%

• 2018: 23.93%

• 2019: 10.46%

• 2020: 5.85%

• 2021: 0%

•2022: 6.17%

• 2023: 14.65%

• 2024: 3.7%

• 2025: 7.9% (proposed)

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