The rest of the Northern Arizona Youth Football League waits while the Camp Verde Minors team decides its playoff fate at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, in Williams.
That is where the Coyotes [4-2] must travel to face the Chino Valley Cougars to make up a rained-out game from Sept. 5.
“They won’t let them turn the lights on at Chino,” head coach Ryan Turnbell said after going two overtimes with the Bagdad Razorbacks at home before stopping them a foot short of the goal line Saturday, Oct. 16, 45-38. “My options were that or to play Sunday, [Oct. 18] after the Bagdad game. It’s going to be hard enough getting a team together and getting coaches up there.”
Turnbell couldn’t do that to his 30 mostly middle school players after they came back from a 19-7 halftime deficit to force two overtimes — making a goal-line stand at the one-foot-line, on three consecutive downs, to beat Bagdad, he said.
“There was way too much going on to replay it all in my head,” he said. “There was not one player who did not give the full 110 percent. It was just a back-and-forth, fast-paced game.”
At stake Oct. 22 for Turnbell’s team, tied for fourth place with the Cottonwood Bears, is home field advantage in the first round of the NAYF playoffs.
“When you put a makeshift team together in two days for a game right after school gets out, it’s pretty much go up there or end the season,” he said. “We’re going to play our hardest. I can’t instill the value in the kids never to give up, even if we just show up with 13 players.”
For the full story and more photos, please see the Wednesday, Oct. 21, issue of the Camp Verde Journal.
