Mica Mountain is ready to defend its Class 4A title with a new leader at the helm, but its first-year head coach, Jay Campos, is no stranger to the state championship game.
After Mica Mountain’s first varsity head coach, Pat Nugent, retired on top last season, Campos, who is also an assistant principal at Mica, stepped in to replace him. Campos had coached at Sabino from 2003-16, where he had a 133-35 record before becoming an administrator full-time at Sabino and moving to Mica Mountain when the school opened in 2020.
This is his fifth appearance in a state championship game.
Mica Mountain head football coach Jay Campos leads his players through an afternoon practice, Dec. 2, 2025.
“It's definitely exciting to be back and I'm just happy to have this opportunity with this group of kids and coaches," Campos said. "It’s been a phenomenal group, not just the boys and their and their families, but also the coaches that I've coached with here. Some are from coach Nugent's staff, some came with me from Sabino, so it's kind of a mix and we really bonded well together and we jelled well and that's a big part of our success is that even when things were going tough for us and we were at 2-2, we still stuck together, and we follow the process and the boys believe and here we are now with a chance to win a state championship and go back to back. I don't know if anyone's done that in Tucson since the early '70s.”
The last school in the Tucson area to win back-to-back state championships was Canyon del Oro in 1976-77.
No. 7 Mica Mountain (11-2) faces top-seeded Phoenix Arcadia (13-0) in the state title game on Friday at ASU.
Mica Mountain's Broden Schmidt gets the congratulations from teammates after falling on a Sahuaro fumble during the second quarter of their 4A Kino game on Oct. 31, 2025.
“A lot of people did doubt us,” said senior linebacker Broden Schmidt. “We did lose around 31 seniors last year, but I was confident in the team that we had from the training started in January. I was confident in the team that we were building up.”
The Thunderbolts returned players, including Schmidt, who won 4A Kino Region Player of the Year and Kino’s defensive POY, and senior athlete Riley Carson, who won Region Offensive Player of the Year.
Campos, who made the state final in 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2016, didn’t know what to expect when he took over the program.
Jay Campos, Mica Mountain head football coach, watches his quarterbacks warm up during an afternoon practice, Dec. 2, 2025.
“I knew we had a good nucleus of kids, but when you lose 31 seniors, that's a lot," Campos said. "You lose 10 offensive starters and 7 defensive starters, that's a ton. I thought we had good players, but you never know how it's all going to shake out and how they're going to respond to adversity because when that adversity came, you know, we could have gone one of two ways, one being just tanking our season, two being we'd find a way to fix it and figure it out and persevere and that's what we chose.
“So, I told the boys a couple weeks ago, through adversity comes growth and our team has grown and shown that growth, you know, throughout the whole season.”
After starting the season 2-2, the Thunderbolts have won nine in a row.
The last two of those wins came at No. 2 Snowflake, 21-14, and 31-3 at No. 6 Yuma Gila Ridge.
Mica Mountain’s Jaidyn Crist gets off the pass as Sahuaro’s Jaxson Moore bears down during the second quarter of their 4A Kino game, Oct. 31, 2025.
“It feels awesome,” said Mica Mountain senior quarterback Jaidyn Crist. “I think the mentality every week is just persevere and get through the hard times and I think it's paying off.”
Campos said getting back to the state championship game in consecutive years means a lot for the chance to represent Tucson.
“I told the boys that each trip was a business trip going to Snowflake, driving up, 4½, five hours to get up there,” Campos said. “We wanted to go up there and take care of business, which we did and it was the same mindset going to Yuma last week playing Gila Ridge is that we wanted to get up there and take care of business.
“I think we've driven 1,200 miles the last two weeks, you know, going down and back from Snowflake to Yuma — our kids are well traveled,” he added. “They’re very focused to go up when we did two weeks in a row, the long road trips and handling things the way we did from our game prep to our execution during the game time, I think it's a tribute to the boys and their level focus.”
Campos, the 4A Kino Region Coach of the Year, has won 144 games, an average of 9.6 per season.
Crist said it was a blessing getting to play for Nugent and Campos.
“He made sure that he went through the process with us, he didn't rush into it, he made sure to get to know all of us first,” Schmidt said of Campos. “So, he really did a great job at, like, taking his time to get to know us and get to know us as students and as players.”
Mica Mountain's head coach Jay Campos gets a hug from Korben Greene (32) after the Thunderbolts’s 21-0 win over Sahuaro and a first place finish in 4A Kino, Oct. 31, 2025, in Tucson.
While Mica went on the road for the semifinals and quarters, Arcadia, which is about a 20-minute drive from Mountain America Stadium, played all of its tournament games at home.
“We're definitely road tested, right? We just put a lot of miles on travel to the northeast part of the state, the southwest part of the state and we're taking care of business,” Campos said. “So now we got to go to the central part of the state and go up to their country up there and kind of do like the U of A did last week and go in to Sun Devil stadium.”
Mica Mountain head football coach Jay Campos leads his players through an afternoon practice, Dec. 2, 2025.
Extra points
– Due to the NCAA volleyball tournament at Desert Financial Arena and the Tempe Festival of the Arts on Mill Avenue, the AIA is recommending fans come from the north or east. Parking is free in the lots to the north, northeast corner and east side of the stadium.
The entrances are in the northeast and the southwest, near the light rail stop.
– Southern Arizona has won two 4A state championships in a row after not having won at that level since Canyon del Oro won the 2009 4A Division I title. CDO also won it in 2023.
– Arcadia has won two state championships, in 1960 and 1962.
