In its epic run to the 2013 state football championship, undefeated Salpointe Catholic gained a school-record 5,775 yards. How can you do better than that?
Here’s how: In the last five seasons, Scottsdale Saguaro has gained 8,090, 6,479, 6,961, 6,622 and now 6,802 yards — and it still has a game remaining.
Last spring, the school that refers to itself as “SagU” distributed a Twitter photograph of the Sabercats’ 2018 state championship ring. It is a jewel-adorned beauty with five mini footballs separated by the numeral 5.
Five? Saguaro has won five consecutive state football championships.
Dating to the 1920s, no other team in state history has won five straight football championships. Not the modern Phoenix-area behemoths such as Mesa Mountain View, Peoria Centennial, Scottsdale Chaparral, or even smaller-school mountain powers Lakeside Blue Ridge or Flagstaff High of the 1980s and 1990s.
Saguaro will play for its sixth consecutive championship Friday night, against Salpointe. The Sabercats reached the title game at Arizona Stadium by outscoring three playoff opponents by an aggregate 180-12.
Isn’t this when the games are supposed to be harder? Not for the Sabercats. Saguaro has won 19 consecutive playoff games by a combined score of 913-229.
Not only that, by my count Saguaro has 21 players who have been offered college scholarships, ranging from Alabama and Arizona to USC and UCLA. No one keeps track of such data, but it is surely a state record for college football recruits on a single team.
Salpointe’s Bijan Robinson, right, and the Lancers lost to Saguaro in last year’s state title game. The rematch is Friday.
You may wonder: What is Saguaro doing playing in Class 4A? What are the Sabercats doing in a classification with Rio Rico, Walden Grove and size-challenged Palo Verde and Amphitheater?
When I asked Tucson’s three-time state championship coach Jeff Scurran that question he smiled and said, “The race to play down is on.”
In high school sports, “playing down” means to do whatever possible to avoid Phoenix-area super-powers in classes 6A and 5A.
“The minute open-enrollment was approved, the size of the school didn’t matter much any more,” said Scurran.
Saguaro, a magnet for top players from Phoenix’s vast junior football system, has an enrollment of roughly 1,300; Salpointe: 1,200. A hugely successful football school like Phoenix Centennial has an enrollment of 2,100.
A year ago, Saguaro listed 99 players on its football roster; Scurran’s Catalina Foothills team listed 41. That didn’t matter when the AIA dictated a 2017 schedule that began with Foothills vs. Saguaro, the same school that beat Foothills in the previous season’s 4A state championship game. In effect, Foothills played Saguaro in back-to-back games, losing 42-13 and 41-13.
That’s nuts.
“You can spend a week working the strategy, putting the X’s and O’s on paper,” Scurran said. “But who was I kidding? We didn’t have the players to do it.”
Everyone on the planet understands Saguaro fits more properly in 6A, but it has successfully played down so much that on Friday it will meet 13-0 Salpointe for the 4A championship. On the same turf a year ago, Saguaro beat coach Dennis Bene’s Lancers 28-7.
Nobody’s spilling any tears for Salpointe; it is Tucson’s own football super-power, 48-13 the last five seasons — but still far short of Saguaro’s 64-5.
Fortunately, this “playing down” business in Arizona prep football appears to be reaching a much-overdue end.
“It’s already in the works,” Salpointe athletic director Phil Gruensfelder said. “(The state’s athletic directors) have been working on 10-plus models and narrowed it down to three. I understand and respect the process; these changes will bring some equality to football.”
Once the AIA and athletic directors like Gruensfelder vote on a new classification system to begin in 2020, it’ll be more likely that Saguaro will be in the playoffs opposite football-centric powers such as Centennial, which has won six big-schools state championships since 2006.
“I get it,” said Gruensfelder. “We’ve been successful at the 4A level, and most of the classification models are based on success. That doesn’t mean it’s the only consideration.”
Salpointe “played up” for what seems like forever, about 55 years, bracketed in the state’s highest classifications even though its enrollment suggested it play in a league with smaller schools. Doing so surely cost Salpointe state football championships in 1981 and 1991, when it lost in title games to Phoenix powers.
“When we moved from 5A to 4A, we looked at enrollment and we were the third or fourth smallest 4A school,” Gruensfelder said. “Out administration and our coaches all looked at the loss of class-time playing Phoenix teams — not to mention the expense of renting a bus for $800 every time we had to send a team to Phoenix — and the majority said let’s stay where the enrollment better fits.”
Salpointe has thrived in 4A, winning recent state championships in cross country, soccer, volleyball, softball, track and field, and reaching the title game in baseball and boys basketball.
“As we realign,” said Gruensfelder, “we must also give consideration to the schools that aren’t always successful. Use this example: Rincon has struggled in 5A football. (The Rangers are 10-57 the last six years). We want them to have a better chance to succeed; maybe it will get more kids to participate.
“There’s a lot more to this than who’s playing for a championship.”
But on Friday it’s all about the championship. This could be the best team in Salpointe history. It averages 46 points. It has won its playoff games by a Saguaro-esque 171-35. And it has uncommon motivation, having been eliminated by the Sabercats in 2016 and 2017.
This will be one game that both teams will have to “play up.”
