COLORADO SPRINGS – Discovery Canyon football coach Shawn Mitchell wasn’t entirely sure if Thursday night’s game was a must-win.
The Thunder entered the night ranked 10th in the Class 3A football RPI and had every intention of making the postseason for the ninth time in the program’s 15-year history. But again, he didn’t know if they had to win the game.
With the uncertainty in play, the Thunder opted to leave nothing to chance. They started slow, turning the ball over on their first possession before rolling to a 56-8 win over Sierra to close out the regular season.
“I’m sure that a loss tonight would’ve been detrimental,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know if it would’ve dropped us out of the top 16 or not. In just our perspective as a team and knowing what we had to do moving forward, we just needed to get to win. Even if we didn’t need it, we needed it.”
It has been somewhat of a rough season for the Thunder (5-4 overall, 3-1 Southern 1) so getting a win to cap the regular season felt crucial. Getting it the way that they did, felt energetic.
Quarterback Trevin Alessio went for a big strike on Discovery Canyon’s first drive of the game, but his pass was picked off by Alden Allen at the Sierra one-yard line. The Thunder clamped down defensively, getting their first points of the night on a safety. Then Alessio decided it was time to make up for the interception.
“We were just cold from standing around for all the senior night stuff,” he said of his interception. “It was just a cold first throw to get the jitters out.”
Discovery Canyon stuck with what it knows best and kept the ball on the ground. Greyson Yocum and Logan Moore scored rushing touchdowns to make it a quick 16-0 lead. Alessio then found Justin Pruitt on a quick screen pass. The senior receiver broke into space then cut completely across the field to avoid every Stallions tackler.
Additional rushing touchdowns from Matt Bigari and Alessio got triggered the running clock before halftime.
Knowing full well the team is headed for the postseason, getting a big win heading into the playoffs is something that the Thunder can feed off for the next week.
“It gives us the momentum we need to go into the next game confident,” Yocum said. “We’re going to give it our best next week.”
The worst part now for the Thunder is the waiting game. There are two more days of regular season football left before the 3A playoff bracket is released on Sunday. The anticipation is something that Mitchell is not looking forward to.
“It’s agonizing to wait and see who we’re going to get,” Mitchell said. “We’ll occupy our time with some scouting so we can stay busy with that. We have our league meeting on Sunday to take care of the all-conference stuff. But at 10:00, we’ll all be on our phones during the league meeting to find out what our seed is.”
Since 2012, the only time the Thunder haven’t made the postseason was last year when the bracket was limited to eight teams because of the COVID 19 pandemic. Mitchell and his team are thrilled to be back and know that anything can happen once the playoff games begin.