Before the Arizona Interscholastic Association created the Open category for state football playoffs in 2019, it should’ve done some serious homework.
It would’ve found that no Tucson football team since 1979 has won the state’s big-school football championship. That was Vern Friedli’s Amphitheater club. That was 45 years ago, enough time to know that high school football at the Tucson level hasn’t been able to compete with the Phoenix area mega-schools such as Scottsdale Saguaro, Chandler Hamilton, Peoria Centennial, Chandler Basha and on and on.
When the best Marana High football team since its three 1960s state championships emerged this season, going 10-0 in the regular season, the Tigers were caught in the AIA’s trap.
Coach Phillip Steward’s impressive Class 5A team was sent to the Open playoffs against No. 8 seed Hamilton, state champion four times since 2008 — and runner-up four more times in that period. Predictably, the 6A power beat Marana, 31-22.
Not only that, the other three 5A schools in the Open playoffs were all eliminated in the first round by 6A schools by an average margin of 22 points.
This should’ve been a season the Marana football team would remember fondly for the rest of their lives. Any high school athlete who has been part of a state championship team kindles that pride for a lifetime.
That was all blown to pieces by the AIA’s decision to “think big.”
After Amphi’s 1979 state championship, five Tucson teams — Salpointe Catholic 1981, Sahuaro 1984, Amphi 1989, Amphi 1997 and Sabino 1999 — reached the big school championship game under Hall of Fame coaches like Ed Doherty, Jeff Scurran and Howard Breinig. None were able to win it.
And it’s not only football. No Tucson team has won the state’s big schools boys basketball championship since Dick McConnell’s 1982 Sahuaro team.
Now decades later, the AIA’s flawed decision to mix 5A teams with 6A teams has backfired. Marana’s talented football players and coaches will feel the unnecessary regret for decades.
