Horizon QB’s run sews up 5A crown
Scottsdale Horizon was in transition after a 3-3 COVID season, but coach Andy Litten, hired in March, wasted no time creating a championship culture.
Close win after close win, it all culminated Friday night in a 38-28 victory over Tucson Salpointe Catholic for the 5A football championship at Sun Devil Stadium.
Horizon (12-2) captured its first state championship since 1994 and only its second total. Its only other state championship appearance before Friday came in 1995.
Quarterback Skyler Partridge, who shredded Salpointe’s secondary with his passing, iced the game with 4:20 to play when he faked a handoff on third down and ran 40 yards through a huge hole untouched for a touchdown and a 38-21 lead.
“It wasn’t me, it was the kids,” Litten said earlier in the week. “They were excited about coming back after a rough season in COVID. They put in the time. They wanted to do everything that had to do with football.”
After the game, Litten reiterated that, and added, “This championship came because of the hunger they created for being bottled up by COVID.”
“Releasing them with a fresh start really helped,” he said.
Horizon (12-2) built a 21-0 halftime lead, rolling up 244 yards, 175 passing from quarterback Skyler Partridge, who hooked up seven times with Cole Linyard for 121 yards and a touchdown.
He also found Ethan Tinsley for an 18yard score in the half.
Litten called it the greatest game in Partridge’s career. He was 25 of 33 for 278 yards and three scores to go with that long touchdown run that sealed it.
“I can’t be more proud of number 3,” Litten said. “He’s one of my favorite kids
I ever coached, and I coached some great kids.”
Last year, while at Chandler Hamilton, where he was the offensive coordinator, he worked with quarterback Nicco Marchiol, who led the Huskies to the Open final, before falling to Chandler 23-21.
The long, time-consuming sustained drives that Horizon put together -- 19and 13-play scoring drives -- was vintage Hamilton from a year ago.
“That’s our MO,” Litten said. “We want to have 12-, 15-play drives. Even while I was at Hamilton, our best drive ever happened there was a 29-play drive Nicco had. That’s what we do.”
But Salpointe wouldn’t go down quietly.
The Lancers stuffed Horizon on its first two possessions of the second half, as Anthony Wilhite broke loose on a 17yard scoring run after the Huskies gave them life with a roughing-the-passer penalty on a fourth-down incompletion,
and a blocked punt was recovered in the end zone by Damian Coley.
Suddenly, it was 21-14 with 5:27 left in the third quarter.
But Horizon then went on one of its long, time-consuming drives, this time covering 76 yards on 13 plays with Partridge finding Chase Jung from 9 yards out to end the third quarter and build the lead back up by two touchdowns.
After quarterback Treyson Bourguet fumbled at his 43, Horizon moved to the 6, before Grady Gross kicked a 28-yard field goal to make it 31-14 with 8:41 to play.
Bourguet’s first touchdown pass -- a 37-yarder to Gabe Felix -- inside seven minutes cut it to 31-21.
Bourguet’s 1-yard scoring run with 2:40 left cut it to 10 points, but Horizon ate up the remaining time getting a couple of first down as Salpointe used up its timeouts.
Afterward, Salpointe coach Eric Rogers herded his players to the locker room and didn’t talk to reporters, while the AIA tried to deliver the Lancers the runnerup trophy.
Even though Salpointe got to use Arizona Stadium during the week to prepare for a big stadium, it didn’t have the Lancers ready for Horizon’s four-man front that bottled up Bourguet, who was 4 of 12 passing for 31 yards in the first half.
His biggest play came on a broken play late in the half after the Lancers fell behind by 21 points, when he scrambled for 40 yards to the Horizon 40.
But the Lancers (11-3) weren’t able to get any points on the board before the half, missing a 40-yard field-goal try.
Horizon needed only five plays to score its first touchdown, then one play, a 66-yard hookup to Linyard, for its next TD.
But then, the Huskies moved the ball with a long, sustained drive that ate up seven minutes, moving 85 yards on 19 plays, before tailback Wesley Lambert capped it with a 1-yard scoring run with 1:18 left in the half and a 21-0 lead.
Linyard caught 15 passes for 189 yards. Lambert ran for 147 yards on 33 carries, as the Huskies racked up 191 rushing yards and 278 passing yards.
“Our game plan was to try to be balanced,” Linyard said. “The ball just started finding my way.”
Partridge said that Salpointe was playing a soft zone and he was able to find the open spaces.
“They were playing off of him, he was running bubbles,” Partridge said. “They couldn’t really stop him. It was working.”
He said he treated this like every other game.
“It’s just business,” Partridge said. Partridge said that he knew after Litten took over the program in the spring, a championship culture was being built.
“It really changed the culture here,” Partridge said. “Look at us now.”