First place in Division III, Section VIII belongs to the Mingus Union High School varsity football team after a 38-0 road pasting of Coconino High School.
The Marauders also advanced to No. 12 in the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s power rankings heading into their final regular-season game outside their section Friday, Oct. 16, at McClintock High School in Tempe.
Prescott High School, where the Marauders will play their season finale Friday, Oct. 30, is also 6-1 but is ranked 17th and has only played one sectional game.
Of all the high school teams in Divisions I through III, no Northern Arizona program is ranked higher than head coach Bob Young’s Marauders [6-1], which rode three touchdown runs by senior quarterback Jordan Upham to victory Friday, Oct. 9, in Flagstaff.
“It’s been a while,” said Upham, who was the leading rusher for MUHS, averaging nearly 11½ yards a carry for a total of 148 yards to go with 101 yards passing. “We still have more to prove.”
After a first-quarter stalemate against the last-place Panthers, Upham bookended the second quarter with scoring runs.
“We all agreed with coach Young at halftime: This was the worst half of football we’d played all year,” Upham said. “I don’t know if we thought it was going to be an easy win, but our intensity was low. We came out pretty flat.”
But after Upham’s eight-yard run got MUHS on the scoreboard to begin the second quarter, Upham wasn’t ready to take a knee and head into the locker room with 18 seconds to play before halftime.
“It was one of those things where they either have to tackle me, the fullback or the slotback,” he said. “Our slots and fullbacks were being covered, so I just read it and made the big play.”
He sprang a 71-yard run to give MUHS a two-touchdown lead — a scoring cushion Upham would further exploit with just 2:10 elapsed in the third quarter.
For the full story and standings, please see the Wednesday, Oct. 14, issue of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
