It’s disconcerting for a sportswriter when he calls a football coach to talk about the game his team played the night before and he says, “I’ll tell you what, I don’t even know [the score] …. The last I saw, it was 48-6.”
But, Camp Verde High School coach Jerry Rhoades was simply reflecting the odd circumstances surrounding the Cowboys’ loss to Paradise Honors High School Saturday, Oct. 1, in Surprise. For the record, the score posted on maxpreps.com is 54-6.
“It was really a strange night, to say the least,” he said, adding that the game officials “just kind of stopped the game, gave us our balls and walked off the field.”
The scoreboard went on the fritz in the first half — sometimes on, sometimes not. Rhoades said the referee told him that even though the board would blank out, it was still keeping the correct time, but that the officials would also keep time on the field.
The plan didn’t quite work out, according to Rhoades.
“The second quarter kept dragging on. I know that the clock wasn’t running. From the 4:29 mark to 3:15, they scored three touchdowns. The clock never ran! I told my assistant coaches that if the clock didn’t start working, we’d be down 80-0 by halftime.”
He said each team had two possessions in less than a minute.
The surprises didn’t stop with the time issues.
On the first series of the game, a Cowboy defender stripped the Paradise Honors ball carrier and ran 95 yards for a touchdown. It was nullified, however, when an official called a penalty for helmet-to-helmet contact, a call that Rhoades disputed.
“That killed our momentum, our mojo,” he said, noting that the Panthers immediately scored and took a 14-0 lead in the first quarter.
They scored 27 unanswered points in the apparently elongated second quarter.
But Rhoades admitted that the loss had nothing to do with his team’s performance.
It was another surprise, however, that affected the Cowboys the most.
What the coaching staff had seen on game film was not what they saw on the field, as Paradise Honors came out throwing on almost every down, Rhoades said, adding that the Panthers typically pass six or seven a game.
“Maybe they figured, ‘We’re just playing Camp Verde … it’s a good week to put something new in.’
“That threw us for a loop. It’s not what we had prepared for,” he said. “But, really, they were so much better than us physically and athletically.”
What bothered Rhoades more was that his players’ body language made it seem as though they had quit on the game.
He said he called them out in the locker room at halftime.
“Their heads were down … tails between their legs as if they just wanted to take their ball and go home. I told them I don’t care if it’s 100-0, you have to find something inside, have pride, show character.”
Rhoades said he benched the upperclassmen at the beginning of the second half.
“The missed tackles, letting guys run by you …. I can accept those mistakes from sophomores.”
As the half progressed, he rotated in the upperclassmen and by the end of the game, the team’s attitude had adjusted.
“We were a different team in the second half. We got after it a little,” he said. “It was a huge learning experience for all of us.”
Despite the fact Camp Verde has yet to win any of the five games it has played this season — there was one forfeit when Arete Prep Academy was unable to field a team — Rhoades made a bold prediction for the rest of the season: “We’re going to win three out of four games.”
Next up for the Cowboys is a home game against Mohave Accelerated on Friday, Oct. 8.
The following week, they travel to Parker High School, before closing the season at home against Gilbert Christian High School and Sedona Red Rock High School.
The Paradise Honors game was the third that Rhoades has coached since the suspension of head coach Steve Darby in mid-September.
