Coachella Valley heads to Vegas for make-up game
As football players at Coachella Valley High School hung their heads in their locker room last Friday after hearing their game was canceled, head coach Bill Johnson made them a promise.
Johnson told his players he would immediately get to work in an effort to find them a replacement game during their bye week. About 48 hours later, Johnson had it all worked out and delivered the news to his team.
This Friday, instead of sitting home, the Arabs will be playing in Las Vegas.
Johnson, now in his fourth season as head coach, said that he did not sleep much Friday night, after his team’s second canceled game in the first three weeks of the 2023 season.
Heavy rainfall flooded the football field at Coachella Valley High, so school officials made the difficult decision to cancel the Arabs’ game versus San Jacinto Valley Academy. The school had also had its season opener at Xavier Prep canceled due to lightning, so the Arabs had quickly gone from 10 regular season games to just eight.
“We were all disappointed,” said Arabs star running back Aaron Ramirez, who rushed for 273 yards and scored five touchdowns in Coachella Valley’s only game this season. “I was really looking forward to this (home) opener and going out there and showing out for the fans.”
Johnson spent Friday night and into the early hours of Saturday morning scouring the internet, looking for other teams in the Southwest that had also had games canceled in the first three weeks. One publication in Las Vegas listed a number of schools in that region that had been through something
similar to the Arabs. One of them was Eldorado High on the east side of Las Vegas.
The Sundevils had also had a pair of early-season games canceled, so they were especially motivated to find an opponent for a make-up game, Johnson said.
The two schools will play in the Arabs’ final non-league game of the season at Eldorado High at 7 p.m. Friday.
On Coachella Valley’s end, they were able to get the travel approved quickly, while Eldorado was able to get the referees scheduled and sort out the necessary logistics for hosting a game.
Johnson said that despite school district offices being closed for the holiday weekend, administrators at both districts worked over the weekend to make the game possible. He credited people at Coachella Valley High School, including Principal Socorro Sanchez, for making the out-of-town travel possible during a holiday and on such short notice.
“We’re grateful for their support,” Johnson said. “Now, it’s time to get back to work because we’ve got a game to play.”
Coachella Valley and Eldorado are each 1-0 on the season. The Arabs beat Palo Verde Valley, 41-21, on Aug. 25 and Eldorado beat Clark High, 21-0, on the same day. According to the Las Vegas Sun, the Sundevils’ season opener on Aug. 18 was canceled due to “poor weather,” without further specifics.
The game will mark the first time the Arabs have traveled out of state for a football game since 2019, when they played at Foothill in Henderson, Nevada. They lost that game, 19-0.
Coaches at Coachella Valley and Eldorado discussed playing the game at a neutral site somewhere in the middle, perhaps near Barstow, to prevent either team from traveling more than a couple hours. But that would have meant involving a third school district in the logistics on short notice, which may have meant that the details would not be finalized until at least Tuesday or Wednesday, if at all.
“With that in mind, rather than wait until later in the week to see what happens,” Johnson said, “we just went ahead and decided to make the trip all the way.”
Johnson notified players they would have a make-up game this week, during what was previously scheduled as a bye week prior to the start of Desert Valley League play. He said that they were ecstatic about the opportunity to take the field after what has been an incredibly frustrating start to what looks like an otherwise very promising year for the Arabs.
“We are very grateful,” Ramirez said. “We’ve really been wanting to go out there and show what we can do as a team. Now that we got Eldorado this Friday, we’re most definitely getting right back to work and patiently waiting for this Friday night lights game.”
Andrew John covers sports in the Coachella Valley for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at