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.
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.
The 2020 all-state softball teams are presented by CHSAANow.com, ColoradoPreps.com and MaxPreps.
These team were created following a process where the coaches voted upon a list of nominees. Players who were named first-team all-league are eligible for the all-state ballot.
Coaches also voted specifically for player and coach of the year.
Legend picked up a major top-10 win on Friday night.
The Titans, ranked No. 10 in Class 5A, built on a hot start en route to a 31-7 road upset of No. 7 Regis Jesuit.
The win was led by seniors Kalen Shoemaker and Connor Eise, who each had two touchdowns: Shoemaker with one throwing and one rushing, and Eise with two on the ground.
Legend is now off to a 3-0 start for the second consecutive season, and the win marked a program first for the Titans, who had yet to beat Regis Jesuit. The schools met each of the past two seasons.
Five minutes in, Legend took a 7-0 lead when Eise snuck in on the left side from 1-yard out.
Then early in the second quarter, on third down, Shoemaker rolled to his right and threw back left, finding Carter Helfrich on a 10-yard score that made it 14-0.
A few minutes after that, Shoemaker dashed 90 yards on the ground to make it 21-0.
Regis scored just before halftime to cut the lead to 21-7 when Dervin Taylor scored up the middle from 10 yards out.
Legend added a 25-yard field goal from Caden Smith, and it was 24-7.
In the fourth, Eise capped the scoring with a 25-yard touchdown.
[divider]
6-man: (1) Fleming 32, (5) Prairie 8
Scoreless at halftime, and a one-score game after three quarters, Fleming broke things open to come up with a major top-5 win on Friday night.
“We did some things well, and there’s some things we definitely have to work on, but I guess we did enough well,” Fleming coach John King told the Scoreboard Show.
A defensive struggle through the first two quarters, Fleming scored two touchdowns in the first minute of the third quarter to go up 16-0.
“We finally kind of settled down and started executing better offensively, and then really had all the momentum in the world,” King said. “The next two possessions in a row, we turned the ball over. We could have really taken the game over, but we just kept shooting ourselves in the foot and let them hang around.”
Prairie scored two minutes after that, making it 16-8 heading to the final frame.
Fleming scored on the third play of that fourth quarter, pushing their lead to 24-8, and added a final score with 4:31 to play on fourth down.
“It was a really nice battle for us,” King said. “We had some kids who are starting for us the first time this year.”
[divider]
2A: (3) Sterling 31, (5) Platte Valley 21
Kaeden Sheets threw four touchdowns as Sterling held off a rally from Platte Valley to win the top-5 battle.
Sheets’ big night started off with three first-quarter touchdowns, two to Tucker Myers, as the Tigers built an 18-0 lead.
Platte Valley rallied. McDaniel had a 2-yard run with 4:35 left in the third, and two minutes after that, McDaniel hit Lauer for a 12-yard score to make it 24-21.
In the fourth quarter, Peyton Rose sealed the game with an 8-yard run.
Gunnison won its first varsity game since 2016, 20-7, over Cedaredge.
In double overtime, Windsor beat Erie 38-32. “Different players stepped up at different times and made big plays,” Windsor coach Chris Jones told the Scoreboard Show. “It was a wonderful team effort on defense.” The Wizards are now 3-0.
8-man No. 1 Sedgwick County won its 20th consecutive game, the longest streak in the state, with a 60-14 win over No. 10 Haxtun.
In their first game of 2020 following a two-week quarantine, 4A No. 3 Pine Creek beat 5A Chaparral 17-7.
In the annual Whistle Game, 2A No. 4 Lamar beat rival La Junta 43-14 after building a 28-0 lead. “We started out pretty fast. We were able to grab some pretty big chunks there,” coach Jason Tice told the Scoreboard Show.
3A No. 4 Lutheran was impressive in a top-10 game for the second consecutive week, this time beating No. 7 Palisade 54-24.
After moving up to No. 1 this week, Roosevelt beat Thompson Valley 42-0 in 3A.
In 5A, Douglas County beat Doherty 27-24 on a last-second field goal.
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.
