VarsityXtra

The top three teams in the 4A-I Desert Sky region all won on Friday. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Scottsdale Saguaro, Scottsdale Chaparral and Paradise Valley have been ranked in the Tribune’s top-5 since the season started and are a combined 13-0.

But each team’s region opener sure wasn’t easy.

Phoenix Shadow Mountain was within 10 at the half before Saguaro pulled away for a 24-0 win. Chaparral trailed in the second quarter against Apache Junction, and a fortuitous bounce on a punt helped greatly in grabbing a halftime lead. The Firebirds also pulled away in the second half, winning 31-12. The closest call was Paradise Valley, which never trailed but had to hold on for a 21-16 over Cave Creek Cactus Shadows.

As chronicled in Friday’s VarsityXtra section, the Desert Sky is stacked with talent from top to bottom. Cactus Shadows and Shadow Mountain tied for last place in region play last season, finishing 1-5, and they’re already giving the top teams a run for their money.

The next month and a half should be a lot of fun as everything gets sorted out.

Sure, it wasn’t the sexiest of matchups. Yes, there were other higher-profile games to see. No, it wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing, not that Scottsdale Horizon should care. (Steve Casey is too good a coach to have suffered through the past few seasons, even after the Huskies moved from 5A-I to 5A-II).

But much like its cross-’Tukee rival Desert Vista, Phoenix Mountain Pointe is a solid place to watch a game (especially during sunset and dusk with mountains in the backdrop), and I wanted to see what the hoopla about Pride tailback De’andre Currie was all about.

I saw all right.  He’s fast, extremely shifty, can switch directions quickly, and with a combination of hard running and his low center of gravity (he’s 5-foot-6, maybe), is very difficult to tackle.

Currie led the Pride’s JV team in rushing last year, and with a collection of kids departing for Laveen Cesar Chavez or Chandler, he was going to get his chance on Varsity. In several conversations with coach Phil Abbadessa before the season started, Currie was never mentioned.

He got the picture-esque yards (a 73-yard run in the first quarter in which he ran around the left side of his O-line, made a couple cuts and shed a couple tackles down the sideline) and the tough yards (4th-and-1 conversion).

He also got hurt before halftime when his ankle got caught while being tackled at the 1-yard-line just before halftime, and though Abbadessa won’t know if or how much time he’ll miss until early next week, severe ankle sprains can be torturous when it comes to fully healing.

The Pride had 1st-and-goal at the 1 when Currie had to be helped off the field, but couldn’t score a touchdown, settled for a field goal (and 10-9 lead), and that was the beginning of the end.

Quarterback Austin Lahr had his left (non-throwing) hand injured shortly thereafter and couldn’t return, and linebacker Ryan Noble suffered a major leg injury on the second-half kickoff.

Then speedster Will Claye made a poor decision, got caught, and kicked out of the game doing some extracurriculars on the final snap while Horizon was taking a knee, and any player who gets ejected is automatically suspended from the next game.

So there’s a real possibility Mountain Pointe could be playing at Chandler Hamilton next week without a starting running back, quarterback (though Lahr’s injury appeared to be the least serious of the three), receiver/defensive back and linebacker.

As offensive schemes go, there is none in Arizona more quarterback-friendly than the one being run at Mesa Desert Ridge.
In the past two seasons, Jaguars QBs have set or tied three state records. Josh Cain broke the 5A record for passing yards in a season (3,617) last year, and Kevin Pantastico on Friday smashed the state mark for passing yards in a game (595) and tied the 5A record for touchdown passes in a game (six).
If Desert Ridge advances to the state quarterfinals like it did last season, and Pantastico stays healthy, Cain’s record might not even last 12 months. Pantastico, with 1,058 yards through three games, is on pace to throw for 4,232 yards in 12 games, a total which would also be a record at any level.
Desert Ridge’s quarterbacks aren’t necessarily the most naturally talented, but with Jeremy Hathcock coaching ’em up, they’re always among the most entertaining.

Shame on the Chandler school district and in particular the folks at the very top of the district, i.e., the superintendent.
The number of transfers and juggling of players between its schools each year particularly in football is plain embarrassing.
Getting a huge mouthful of winning and success this decade has whetted the Chandler district’s appetite for victory so much that competition for athletes within the district has become darn near cut-throat. Two of the district’s coaches aren’t even on speaking terms.
It’s become so bad I wouldn’t be surprised one day in the near future to find a student who has played at all four of the district’s high schools.
Maybe the AIA should get that investigative arm that was just established in the spring headed south and start scrutinizing. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see there’s a festering problem in the Chandler district that the district doesn’t want to address or won’t address.
Or maybe I should look at it from their side. All their schools are winning and in the playoffs routinely. What could possibly be wrong with that?

The path to an undefeated regular season for No. 1 Scottsdale Notre Dame has become much clearer of late. Coming into the season, the consensus was the Saints’ toughest competition would come from within the Black Canyon Region. That doesn’t appear to be the case any more.
Phoenix Washington, the only team in the region Notre Dame has never defeated, is off to a 1-3 start.
Phoenix Moon Valley and Phoenix Greenway, believed to be the Black Canyon’s second-best teams, are both a disappointing 2-1, each having lost to the only quality opponent it has faced. 
And neither Phoenix Cortez (2-1) nor Glendale (0-3) are threats.
That leaves Chandler Seton Catholic (4-0) and Marin Catholic (1-1) of Kentfield, Calif., as the most imposing obstacles remaining. Seton will attempt to upset the Saints this week while Marin Catholic gets its chance to ruin perfection on Oct. 18.
Don’t count on either team prevailing. A 10-0 regular season for Notre Dame is as sure a thing as there is in the always unpredictable world of high school football.

As if Phoenix Desert Vista weren’t already a pressure-cooker, there’s more wrath directed toward coach Dan Hinds, most of which involves having senior wunderkind Devon Kennard playing both ways.

Naturally, all of this came to a boil once Kennard was injured in the final two minutes of Friday night’s game against Chandler, and moreso now that a torn ACL has ended his senior season, an enormously devastating blow to the psyche and championship aspirations in Ahwatukee.

Kennard’s future should be fine. His five schools of choice (Arizona State, USC, UCLA, Texas and Cal) wisely kept their scholarship offers on the table, and he’ll be good-to-go in less than a calendar year given his work ethic and family pedigree.

His future is on defense, but he’s averaged more than seven yards per carry on offense the past 1 1/2 seasons. It takes a bare minimum of two people to bring him down on every play, and he has the power to run through defenders between the tackles, and the speed to run away.

Combine that with his desire to be a two-way player and preseason discussions with Hinds about carrying the ball, and it’s absurd to suggest Hinds should have never had him on the field while Desert Vista tried to run out the clock Friday.

Your best players play, and a place like D.V. which doesn’t have numbers like Chandler Hamilton or Mesa Red Mountain has little choice. And even if they had more options, Kennard would probably be as good as, or better than, any alternatives.

Right guy. Right play. Wrong result. Welcome to football, and the real world, where awful things can still happen to the best.

Who said reapeating as 5A Division I state champions was easy?

Well, I did. Here. The VX Video portion of our Website can, sadly for me, confirm this.

Actually, I said it would be done, I didn’t say it would be easy, and it won’t be.

It’s been a rough go lately for Phoenix Brophy, which is 2-2 entering Friday’s game against No. 2 Mesa Mountain View this week. A .500 record while navigating a boatload of new players on offense and a difficult schedule is nothing to sneeze at.

The grind will continue. The Broncos hurt themselves in losses to Chandler Hamilton and Tucson Salpointe (and count Broncos coach Scooter Molander among those who think Salpointe could run the table through the rest of the regular season).

There have been mistakes of youth, inexperience and pains.

Molander will never make excuses for himself or his team, which partly explains why he’s always mentioned among the best coaches in the state, but the Broncos have been hit pretty hard by injuries on both sides of the ball.

The most notable being senior linebacker Adam Holzmeister, who suffered a broken elbow in the season-opener against Las Vegas Bishop Gorman in the Barry Sollenberger Classic. They tried to let it heal inside a cast on its own the past three weeks, but it wasn’t working, so he recently underwent surgery. He’s out for the regular season, but the Broncos hope he can return in time for the playoffs.

He, along with about one-third of the team the Broncos were counting on in August.

Mesa Mountain View has quietly yet methodically battered and beaten three teams to uphold its preseason ranking of No. 4 (now No. 2) in 5A Division I.
Their low-profile is over come Friday night when they visit Phoenix Brophy for the Broncos’ homecoming. The defending state champion Broncos have had little success putting up points in their 2-2 start, which has included Las Vegas Bishop Gorman, Chandler Hamilton and a bonafide 5A-I contender in 2008, Tucson Salpointe.
But this is the type game and team Mountain View didn’t beat last year in bowing out in the quarterfinals in a 9-3 season. It’s a chance for the Toros to gain that little extra in confidence and mojo perhaps they didn’t have last year. And on the flip side a chance for Brophy to claim a huge conference win against a contender that has eluded it thus far.

Then there’s the other side. Chandler wasn’t a happy bunch as they trudged toward the busses following the painful 21-20 loss to Desert Vista.

The focus was of the 2-point conversion which fell apart that could have given the Wolves a 22-21 lead with two minutes left following Tim Buron’s 32-yard fumble return.  It may have been a moot point had Desert Vista not been called for offsides on the extra point which allowed the Wolves to re-think the decision.

The seeds for their struggle, however, were planted early.

The Wolves forced two Thunder quarterback Cody Sokol (who’s going to be really good, by the way) into two interceptions but came away with zero points, and a 7-7 halftime tie should have been at least a 14-7 lead. Maybe more.

“That’s where the game swung,” Chandler coach Jim Ewan said. “We should have had three scores in the half.”

Both sides committed too many penalties, several of which erased big plays while Chandler was trying to come back in the third quarter.

But the Wolves couldn’t run the ball (three attempts in the second half) or find its passing game other than heaves to Markus Wheaton (not a bad strategy either). Devon Kennard and a less-than-full-strength Danny Mullarkey ran wild against Chandler’s defensive line, and quarterback Kyle Yount never had a chance against the constant pressure and painful shots he took all night.

The Wolves felt they could go undefeated this season, and from here on out, they might.  There’s a lot of work to be done, but a lot of time left to play.