Football: Playoff game lives up to 'shootout' billing

Sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh.

Coleville junior quarterback Jason Peters partially seperated his non-throwing shoulder during the first series in the Nevada 1A State Football semifinals at Alamo Saturday and turned around to throw for 519 yards and 10 touchdowns.

Pretty good, right?

The crazy thing is, Coleville still lost. By 54 points.

Alamo picked up a 128-74 win to advance to the state championship game against Tonopah next week. And no, that score is not a typo.

The Wolves kept the game close through the first half, trading scores with Alamo until a kickoff return for a touchdown at the end of the second quarter put the Panthers up 62-52.

From there, Alamo started playing a game of keep-away, recovering four out of five onside kicks to open the second half. Each of those recoveries later translated into a touchdown as the Panthers outscored the Wolves 44-8 in the third quarter.

Peters completed 31 of 44 passes in the game while split end Emmi Sandoval caught eight touchdown passes while piling up 259 yards receiving.

Fullback Shane Parker spent much of the day in the slot and responded with 128 yards and one touchdown. Colton Ward also had a touchdown reception to go with 70 receiving yards.

"Offensively, we had a tremendous game, putting up 74 points against the No. 1-ranked defense in the entire 1A League," Coleville coach Will Sandy said. "Jason played extremely well despite being in considerable pain. His shoulder injury still had a significant impact on the game. We had to remove our best defensive player from an already shaky defense and we lost most of our running game.

"Emmi Sandoval was unstoppable, making one amazing catch after another. Our inability to recover the onside kicks killed us and we definitely proved that if you can't play defense, it doesn't matter how many points you score, you can't win championship games."

Freshman Buh Hamilton returned a kickoff for a 70-yard touchdown and was one bright spot on a defense that gave up 659 yards from scrimmage.

Peters ended the season with 3,477 yards passing and 59 touchdown passes, both of which broke the school eight-man football records. Peters also rushed for 1,167 yards and 21 touchdowns.

Sandoval's 1,686 receiving yards and 31 touchdowns were also school single-season records.

Coleville's offense averaged 528 yards and 68.8 points per game, both of which also broke school records.