When the Bayfield Wolverines look at the 2018 Salida Spartans, they see an image of their own 2017 state championship team. The Spartans are big up front and physical in every aspect of the game.
Bayfield High School will travel to face Salida High School at 7 p.m. Friday in the final game of the regular season. At stake is the Class 2A Intermountain League championship. Salida, which is new to the IML this year, will seek to take the title away from the Wolverines, who have claimed thee consecutive league championships dating back to 2014. That was also the last year Bayfield lost a league contest, with 20 consecutive wins against league foes.
This will be the toughest league game Bayfield has faced during that stretch, including last week’s 14-13 overtime win at Pagosa Springs.
“Salida has a lot of fine athletes,” BHS head coach Gary Heide said. “Their situation is kind of the same where we were last year where they knew when they got all these athletes to their senior year, it was gonna be their year. By gosh, they’re proving it. They’ve really played great together as a team.”
Salida, ranked fifth in the Colorado High School Activities Association Class 2A poll, will enter the game with an unblemished 8-0 record and 3-0 mark in league. No. 4 Bayfield is 6-1 and also 3-0 in league, with the lone loss coming to Class 3A No. 9 Durango.
More important than the poll rankings are the RPI standings that determine state playoff seeding. Bayfield is No. 2 in the latest RPI standings with the third-best strength of schedule, while Salida is fourth with the 18th ranked strength of schedule.
Though Salida hasn’t been challenged as much as Bayfield, Heide was impressed with the team’s 28-22 win against Delta on Sept. 7 and its 35-7 win Oct. 5 at Pagosa Springs.
“We witnessed them handle Pagosa,” Heide said. “They scored on two really nice long drives and had some epic plays. They stifled them with their defense. They battled the same team in the same spot we did last week in a game that could’ve gone either way.”
Bayfield won last week’s slugfest at Pagosa Springs with a 2-point conversion in overtime, as senior running back Keyon Prior was stacked up at the line of scrimmage before he pitched the ball back to senior quarterback Hayden Farmer, who walked in for the winning score. “The Pagosa Pitch” will go down as one of the more memorable plays in Bayfield football history delivered by a class of seniors that already have the best winning percentage of any four-year stretch in Wolverines history to go along with two state championships. While Bayfield’s offense has struggled to find its timing much of the season, that play could help propel a team that knows how to finish in big games.
“It was so doggone exciting,” Heide said. “You get nothing but positives from it. It helps us and proved to us we can play a close game in any situation and still be there in the end to win it. When we left, we all had so much fun and were just tickled. We don’t want to get in that situation again; we just got do to better in order to win.”
Heide said the key to Friday’s game is to run the ball and keep Salida off the field. The Wolverines have rushed for nearly 1,800 yards as a team this season, with senior David Hawkins at the top of the list with 836 yards and six touchdowns on 134 carries, good for an average of 6.2 yards per carry. Prior has 415 rushing yards and another three touchdowns, while junior Dylan Hilliker has 362 yards and four touchdowns.
Farmer has passed for 812 yards and eight touchdowns with eight interceptions and has completed 40 percent of his passes this year for the Wolverines.
He also has 77 rushing yards and two rushing scores. Prior has been his top target in the passing game with 328 yards and four touchdowns, while Hilliker has 151 receiving yards and two touchdowns. BHS junior James Mottin is third on the team with 125 yards and two touchdowns on six catches.
Salida is led by senior running back Vince Deleo, who has rushed for 974 of Salida’s 2,396 yards. He has 15 of Salida’s 28 rushing touchdowns and has averaged 9.1 yards per carry. Salida junior Zayne Walker has thrown for 600 yards and seven touchdowns to three interceptions, while junior David Zwingers has also passed for 292 yards and three touchdowns and two interceptions.
To slow down Deleo and the Spartans, Bayfield will lean on its mighty run defense that thrives on slowing down 1,000-yard rushers. Hawkins has led Bayfield with 69 tackles, while Isaac Lorenzen, a senior nose guard, is the top run stuffer and pass rusher with 45 tackles and 10 sacks. Defensive ends Rhett Hoover and Daniel Westbrook have combined for another 11 sacks and 86 tackles.
“This is the most physical team we’ve faced maybe outside of Durango, which was physical and had speed,” Heide said.
Bayfield’s offense will be aware of Deleo on defense, too. He has 79 tackles to lead the team. Holt Brashears, a senior, has a team-high eight sacks.
“These are bigger boys, and the linebackers are big and strong.” Heide said. “We’re trying to figure out a way to get some first downs, throw the ball and hopefully not turn it over. We have to score when we have chances because we won’t have many chances.
“Salida has been building this for three or four years now. We have to come out and play a flawless game, run the ball, control the clock and have no turnovers. We can’t hurt ourselves.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
If you go
Who:
No. 4 Bayfield at No. 5 Salida
What:
CHSAA Class 2A Intermountain League championship game
When:
7 p.m. Friday
Where:
Salida High School
Listen Live:
KPTE 92.9 FM, KLJH 107.1 FM
Twitter:
@jlivi2
