A week after losing to Rampart, Fountain-Fort Carson got revenge with a 33-17 win on Friday night.
The eighth-ranked Trojans took a 13-10 lead just before halftime, then pushed the lead to 19-10 in the third quarter.
Rampart cut it to 19-17 midway through the third, but Fountain-Fort Carson responded to go up 26-17 on a touchdown pass from Tavian Tuli to Joshua Williams, and then scored again in the fourth quarter after to make it 33-17.
FFC finishes the regular season at 5-1, while Rampart is now 4-2.
The two teams matched up for a second-straight week due to COVID causing quarantines for their originally-scheduled opponents.
[divider]
3A/4A: (5) Pueblo South 35, Vista Ridge 28
In another matchup that spawned out of COVID quarantines, South held off Vista Ridge’s last-minute drive to secure the win.
The Colts’ defense, which gave up 21 points (Vista Ridge had a return score), was the difference.
“Our kids are just absolutely resilient and tough,” Pueblo South coach Ryan Goddard told the Colorado Preps Scoreboard Show. “Everything we expect out of them everything we desire out of them, that’s what they were tonight.
“It just came down to our kids made a coupe of plays, put a little pressure on the quarterback,” Goddard said. “Our secondary played lights out, our linebackers played well, and our defensive line hung in there and tried to get after a really good quarterback.”
[divider]
3A: (3) Durango 27, (10) Canon City 13
Playing without two top players due to quarantines, Durango held off a very good Canon City team to finish the regular season 5-0.
“Every week has been a struggle,” Durango coach David Vogt told the Scoreboard Show. “You never know what’s going to happen week-to-week. … For our kids to rally, it just shows the kind of kids we have here.”
[divider]
1A: (6) Hotchkiss 49, Cedaredge 7
Hotchkiss won as Mordecai White had three touchdowns and 141 yards on nine carries.
The Bulldogs are 6-0.
“We’ve been building toward this,” Hotchkiss coach Curtis Hintz told the Scoreboard Show. “Last year, we were kind of there knocking on the door. … Kids left hungry. They’ve done a good job in the weight room. And, of course, with the year that it’s been with COVID, they’ve done a good job of controlling what they can control. It’s paid off during the regular season, and we’re looking forward to seeing how the bracket unfolds.”
4A No. 1 Dakota Ridge finished the regular season with a 51-0 win over Chatfield. The Eagles are now 6-0. “I’ve been at Dakota Ridge for 25 years — it’s probably the best team we’ve ever had,” coach Ron Woitalewicz told the Scoreboard Show. His team is in contention for the top seed in the 4A playoffs — which are expected to be deep. “This is probably as deep as I’ve seen 4A in a long time, in terms of the quality of teams out there,” Woitalewicz added. A photo gallery is available here.
In 6-man, No. 1 Fleming beat No. 4 Granada 49-44.
Simla, No. 9 in 8-man, beat Dolores Huerta 40-0. Coletin Mazerall rushed for 238 yards and four touchdowns.
5A No. 7 Fairview topped Castle View 49-36 in a back-and-forth game. Quarterback Liam O’Brien threw for 382 yards and five scores. Grant Page had a heck of a game at receiver: 13 catches, 224 yards, four touchdowns.
In the midst of an unprecedented season, Cheraw quarterback Cade Phillips is putting up unprecedented numbers.
The sophomore has been getting better with each week this season and has the Wolverines sitting at 4-1 heading into the final week of the regular season. Perhaps the unordinary part of his story is that he’s getting it done through the air, an unconventional method when it comes to the 6-man classification.
In five games, he’s thrown for 945 yards, 24 touchdowns and has yet to be intercepted by opposing defenses.
He ranks second in all of 6-man for total passing yards and first in touchdowns. In all, just three players have over 900 passing yards in the classification and just two have over 20 passing touchdowns. That honor goes to Phillips and Granada’s Dominic Coleman.
“It’s crazy, honestly,” Phillips said. “First off, I have to thank my blockers and receivers for catching the ball. You see a lot of 6-man teams rushing for big numbers and for Coleman and I to start turning the 6-man game to more of a passing game is crazy.”
As luck would have it, those two battled in what will go down as an all-time regular season 6-man classic. Phillips threw for 271 yards and Coleman bettered him with 294. But each threw seven touchdown passes which set a state record for combined touchdown throws in a game.
(Photo courtesy of Kendi Groves/Hanna Hansen)
Granada won the game 67-60 but it was a show that was well worth the price of admission.
“That was a fun game to be a part of on both sides,” Cheraw coach Brad Phillips said. “It was two fairly high-ranked teams going at it. It was amazing, even for 6-man, how quick both those teams were able to score at some point and both of them have good defenses.”
The next game, against Manzanola, he threw for seven touchdowns again. His 14 touchdowns in consecutive games is a 6-man record, and his 18 TDs in the past three games is also a 6-man record.
This is far from a one-man show. Both coach and quarterback, father and son, praise the effort of the team as a whole. Trey Pearce leads the receiving corps with 384 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns.
If there was any indication that the shootout was a one-off performance for Cade, that went out the window the very next week as he threw for 292 yards and seven more touchdowns in an 82-38 win over Manzanola. This time, however, he added 157 yards and a touchdown while running the ball.
It wasn’t really ideal to have to see those numbers again, but there came a level of comfort knowing that if Cade needs to take to the air, he’s more than capable of effectively slinging the ball around the yard.
“We were hoping he wouldn’t have to,” Brad said. “We were hoping our defense would slow Manzanola down a little more so we wouldn’t have to put up the kind of numbers we did. He has really good receivers and really good blocking and he’s capable of doing that on any evening that we need him to.”
It’s a fun way to play the game.
One of the greatest appeals of the 6-man game is the wide-open nature of the field which tends to allow for several exciting scoring plays in a game. Add in what a kid like Cade can do when he’s generating offense through the air while a teammate like Braeden Harris is balancing the attack on the ground and it makes for some of the most exciting football in the state.
“Our team can score 36 points in a quarter and come back from a 20-point deficit pretty fast,” Cade said. “It’s amazing what we can do when we’re clicking on all cylinders.”
Seven new teams have joined the football rankings this week: Cherokee Trail (5A), Conifer (3A), Valley (2A), Simla (8-man), Swink (8-man), North Park (6-man), and Mountain Valley (6-man).
The rankings, voted upon by coaches, are the official polls of the Association. Polls are released each Monday.
These are the final polls of the regular season. The next poll will come ahead of the seeding meeting.
Offenses ran wild during the 6-man matchup between Granada and Cheraw on Friday. Or “threw” wild, rather.
The two teams combined for 14 touchdown passes in their game, which ended in a 67-60 Granada win. The total sets the state record for combined passing touchdowns in a game. The previous record was 12, set by Revere and Arickaree in 1996, and later tied by Poudre and Brighton in 2013.
“It was a very, very wild football,” Granada coach Traegon Marquez told the Colorado Preps Scoreboard Show on Friday. “A fun one to be a part of. But ‘wild,’ I think, is a mild way to put it.”
Cheraw actually led the game 60-45 going to the fourth quarter, but Granada scored 22 unanswered points to win.
Other marks from the game that found their way into the record book:
Both quarterbacks — Granada’s Dominic Coleman and Cheraw’s Cade Phillips — threw seven touchdowns. This mark is tied for the ninth-most in state history among all classes.
Coleman also had a rushing touchdown, which meant he had eight total in the game. This is tied for the 14th-most in state history.
Coleman and Phillips have each also now thrown 11 touchdowns over the past three games. This is the 12th highest in state history.
Phillips has thrown 15 touchdowns in the past three games. This is the 14th-most in state history.
Coleman has thrown 14 touchdowns in the past three games. This is the 16th-most in state history.
Palisade’s rushing attack held off a monster game from Allen Ortiz, and the Bulldogs beat Green Mountain in a 3A top-10 battle.
Gabe Harrison had two scores to lead Palisade’s offense, while Franklin Barks and Julio Rodriguez also scored on the ground as the eighth-ranked Bulldogs beat seventh-ranked Green Mountain 31-24.
The Bulldogs are now 3-1 this season, with tough games against Conifer and Eagle Valley remaining.
“It’s tough, you’ve got to win to stay in, I know that,” Rammuno said.
Green Mountain’s Ortiz had four receiving touchdowns, twice scoring from 80 yards out. He also had touchdown catches of 56 and 22 yards.
“Boy, there’s a lot of talent on the field,” Rammuno said. “Green Mountain’s got a fine football team.”
The coach added that his team’s own passing attack helped to open the ground game.
“We were able to have some balance offensively,” Rammuno said. “We were able to get the ball in the air a little bit, which really opened up our option game. Tremendous effort by our guys.”
Down 6-0 after the first quarter, Palisade scored twice in the second to go up 14-6 at halftime. The second score came via a 28-yard score by Harrison.
In the third quarter, Rodriguez pushed the lead to 21-12 with his touchdown.
Later in that same frame, the third of Ortiz’s scores cut it to 21-18, but Palisade, and Harrison, responded. His second TD made it 28-18 late in the third.
The score stayed that way until Rudolfo Dexter made a 40-yard field goal with four minutes to play, pushing the lead to 31-18.
Ortiz’s final score made it 31-24 with two minutes to play, but Palisade recovered an onside kick and ran out the clock.
Palisade’s defense had two interceptions in the win.
[divider]
4A: (9) Fountain-Fort Carson 35, (8) Pueblo West 21
A close game throughout, the Trojans get a key touchdown from Q Jones with 5:54 to play that made it 35-21.
Fountain-Fort Carson led 20-7 after the first quarter, but Pueblo West slowly chipped away that that lead. It was 20-14 midway through the third quarter, and later 27-21 early in the fourth.
But Jones’ 15-yard score seemed to put the game away:
Sanford turned an 18-6 first-half lead into a big top-10 win.
After the half, Sanford’s defense made a stop and the offense responded.
“We came out and had a really good stop on their first possession,” Sanford coach Joe Cary told the Scoreboard Show. “Our offense started clicking a little bit better. We started figuring out some different things on how to go at them. The had two great, big linebackers that were really tough in the middle, so we had to figure out how to go around them. We had a few things that we did, and it seemed to work.”
Sanford is now 4-0 this season, but Cary thinks they haven’t yet reached their potential.
“I still don’t think we’ve seen our team play at the level that we want them to,” the coach said. “We’re not content with where we’re at. We’re going to keep pushing to try to get to that level.”
[divider]
6-man: (4) Granada 67, (7) Cheraw 60
It was a shootout in a big top-10 matchup.
Cheraw led 60-45 in the fourth quarter, but Granada was able to rally for the win.
“It was a very, very wild football,” coach Traegon Marquez told the Scoreboard Show. “A fun one to be a part of. But ‘wild,’ I think, is a mild way to put it.”
In a tight contest, 5A No. 6 Fairview beat previously unbeaten Legacy 43-32. Liam O’Brien threw for 267 yards and rushed for another 134. He had three total touchdowns.
1A No. 2 Strasburg beat rival Bennett 42-0. “Bennett came to play, but we did some really good things,” coach Brian Brown told the Scoreboard Show. “They kind of stopped some of our big-play offense, but we really showed a very diverse offense tonight.”
Moffat County had a big upset of 2A No. 9 Woodland Park, 27-23.
Longmont QB Keegan Patterson had another big game. He was 29-of-41 with 316 yards and four touchdowns as his Trojans beat Greeley West 43-21. Photos from the game are available here.
There were quite a few changes to this week’s football rankings, with Dakota Ridge (4A), Roosevelt (3A), Resurrection Christian (2A), and Fleming (6-man) taking over atop their respective classifications.
The rankings, voted upon by coaches, are the official polls of the Association. Polls are released each Monday.
