Nine years ago last month, Desert View and Pueblo met in a game of soon-to-be 2-8 high school football teams, a game that scarcely got notice outside of friends and family.
Pueblo won 12-7, and the two coaches, Pueblo’s Scott McKee and Desert View’s David Rodriguez went their separate ways. In 2005, you wouldn’t have taken a nickel for their chances to someday be undefeated and highly ranked.
McKee, a Sabino grad who played football at Arizona from 1999 to 2002, would go 13-40 in five Pueblo seasons. Rodriguez, a Nogales native, left DVHS after going 5-15.
Rodriguez was then hired to be McKee’s offensive coordinator at Pueblo. In two seasons they were 1-9 and 2-9. When McKee left Pueblo to be the head coach at Sahuaro, Rodriguez went with him.
What happened next is something else.
McKee’s sixth Sahuaro Cougars team is 7-0. Rodriguez, in his fourth season as head coach of the Sahuarita Mustangs, is 8-0. They are the only two unbeatens among 33 Southern Arizona high school football teams.
From their humble beginnings, they have become two of the most successful program-builders in Southern Arizona football history.
Hiring Rodriguez, 45, proved that McKee, 35, who is in his 11th season as a head coach, has a sharp understanding of the game. It reflects on Sahuaro’s success — the Cougars are 29-11 dating to 2010 — and is a reason why the Cougars have reclaimed their 1980s position as TUSD’s top football school.
At Sahuaro, McKee surounded himself with top assistants such as Don Bacon, an institution at the school who has coached everything from softball to soccer. He brought in two of Jeff Scurran’s most accomplished soldiers from Sabino, Santos Olague and Brian Graves.
To complete the rebuilding effort, McKee added his father, Larry McKee, to the staff. Larry McKee was Pueblo’s head coach from 1977 to 1979, an old-school guy with football instincts that can be traced to his days as an Arizona football letterman from 1969 to 1971.
You can’t replace his insight.
Rodriguez, 32-8 at Sahuarita, went 10-1 in 2012 before losing to Peoria Sunrise Mountain in the state playoffs. McKee, 37-24 at Sahuaro, was 8-3 last year before losing to Camp Verde in the playoffs.
There’s no chance they will meet this year. Sahuaro is gunning for the Division II state championship; Sahuarita is a Division IV power.
But their connection is the best story going in Southern Arizona high school football.
