Mesa Mountain View over Mica Mountain 37-7

October 15, 2021 by Andy Morales, AZPreps365


(Andy Morales/AZPreps365)

Mesa Mountain View head coach Joe Germaine made the call and Mica Mountain head coach Pat Nugent picked up the phone. Except for a few public attempts on twitter, private phone calls are pretty much how a lot of the make-up games have been scheduled over the last couple of years due to cancellations from COVID concerns.

The Toros needed to fill an opening this week and the Thunderbolts wanted to expand their inaugural independent season from the limited games they had scheduled to get in as many as the program could get. Sure, Mountain View came in ranked No. 15 in the 6A Conference and Mica Mountain is unranked in the 4A Conference but that only added to the intrigue Thursday night in Vail. As expected, Mountain View pulled away for a 37-7 victory to improve to 5-1 on the year but the game meant a lot more than the final score to the Bolts who are now sitting at 2-1.

“You know our goal was to get better and get these kids prepared for next year and it's 15 to 7 them with 30 seconds left in the first half,” Nugent said. “We can't be more proud of what the sophomores and juniors did tonight. We're so young, we played with four sophomores on the offensive line.”

Sure enough, the Mica Mountain roster has only one senior listed and a freshman QB threw most of the passes for the Bolts but youth has its limits and the Toros won out on experience despite early difficulties. The Toros coughed up the ball on their first play from scrimmage on a lateral that was picked up by freshman Josiah Thornwell. Thornwell returned the ball 22 yards to the 21 and Kaspen Colbert ran the ball in four plays later from 6-yards out to give Mica Mountain a 7-0 lead.

The teams traded punts but Mountain View tied things up on a 39-yard pass from Jack Germaine to 6-foot-5 TE Jackson Bowers with 2:09 left in the first and then Aiden Damiani put the Toros up 15-7 on a 7-yard dash with 8:40 left in the half.

“We came out and we didn't execute in the first half, but we came out the second half and just executed with great blocking when we needed it,” Bowers said.

Bowers is a 4-star recruit with offers from several programs including Arizona, ASU, Washington, USC, BYU, Utah, Georgia Tech and Michigan State.

“I love the attention but if you're not winning it doesn't mean anything,” Bowers added. “We need to all execute at a high level.”

Bowers finished with 86 yards receiving on five catches with the TD catch and he was the main target on three drive-extending plays including a 12-yard catch on a 4th down play in the drive that put the Toros up 15-7.

Mica Mountain was unable to take advantage of another Toro turnover in the final minutes of the second quarter and Germaine hit Matthew Clark for 10 yards to put Mountain View up 22-7 at the half.

Germaine went 15 of 24 for 260 yards with three TD passes including a 41-yard TD score to Clark to make it 30-7 to end the third quarter. Clark finished with 73 yards receiving on 4 catches. Damiani had 76 yards rushing for the Toros on 12 attempts and backup QB Jordan Gile gave us the 37-7 final on a 2-yard dive with 8:48 left in the game.

The Toro defense came up big with only 58 yards given up on the ground and 89 yards through the air in a game where the Bolts had difficulty picking up first downs to extend drives to keep the Toros offense off the field.

“That's a great defensive team over there, we were crazy to take this game and I was scared to death this morning, what it could be, but I can't be more proud of a group of kids that came out and played great high school football,” Nugent added.

Mountain View is set to host No. 16 Mountain Pointe (4-2) next week and then a huge trip to No. 4 Basha (6-0) comes the following week. Mica Mountain isn’t scheduled to play again until the team makes a trip to play at No. 17 Amphitheater (3-1) on Nov. 5. As mentioned before, the team is looking for more opponents.

“We’re playing good football and we're playing competitive teams and I thought it was a three-year project, but I'll tell you what, this group's growing fast and we're going to work and be in the thick of it next year,” Nugent said. “That's what we'd been a part of and what we're trying to do with this group right now, playing games like this is to accelerate the learning process a little bit and hopefully next year it's a lot quicker.”