Pahranagat Valley sets national eight-man scoring record in semifinal win

After watching Coleville score on its first nine possessions Saturday, Pahranagat Valley football coach Ken Higbee decided his team’s only chance to win was to keep the ball away from the Wolves.

The strategy worked, as Pahranagat Valley recovered five of six onside kicks in the third quarter on the way to a 128-74 home win in the Class 1A state semifinals.

The 128 points broke a national scoring record for eight-man football. Pahranagat Valley also set a national eight-man record with 17 touchdowns.

“The only way we could stop them is if they didn’t have the football,” Higbee said. “And unfortunately for them, they couldn’t stop us.”

Pahranagat Valley (11-0) plays Tonopah (8-3) for the Class 1A state title at noon Saturday at Arbor View. Coleville finished 9-2.

Brady Whipple and Taylor Poulsen carried the load for the Panthers, who outscored Coleville 44-8 in the third quarter to take a 106-60 lead.

Whipple rushed for 133 yards and a touchdown and caught six passes for 241 yards and five scores. He also returned two kickoffs for touchdowns.

Poulsen rushed for 175 yards and five TDs and completed 11 of 17 passes for 317 yards and five scores.

“It was running the football with Brady Whipple and throwing the football to Brady Whipple,” Higbee said. “We threw and ran whenever we wanted to on them.”

Pahranagat Valley scored 62 first-half points but couldn’t stop Coleville’s passing game.

Quarterback Jason Peters threw eight first-half touchdown passes, six of them to sophomore receiver Emmi Sandoval.

“It was pretty amazing to see the score,” Higbee said. “To score that many points, that was the furthest from our minds. The thing we wanted to do was keep the football out of (Peters’) hands and continue to score points. When he got his hands on the football, Coleville scored.”

Higbee said his team continued to onside kick in the third quarter to try to hang onto the lead.

“In eight-man football it’s different than 11-man,” Higbee said. “A 32-point lead is gone in a heartbeat.”

Higbee credited kicker Jason Choi for giving the team a good shot at recovering the onside kicks.

“If they’re just going to score at will, you’ve got to do something different,” Higbee said. “At half we looked at each other and said, 'If they’re going to score, we might as well have a 50-50 shot at not giving them the football.’

“We were fortunate enough to execute really, really well.”

Peters completed 32 of 47 passes for 490 yards and 10 touchdowns. Sandoval caught 13 passes for 208 yards and eight TDs.

“If somebody would have told me that Coleville would score 74 points today, I would have laughed at them,” Higbee said. “I didn’t think a team could, but they have a pretty fine quarterback and a nice set of receivers.”

Chase Leavitt added three rushing touchdowns for Pahranagat Valley, and Higbee said his team’s ability to spread the ball around might have been the difference.

“It comes back to one kid not being able to beat a team,” Higbee said. “We’ve got a whole slew of pretty special kids.”