Is winning a state championship supposed to look so easy?
Is it normal for one team to appear like its playing on fast forward compared to everyone else?
Against the No. 1 team in the state, backups shouldn’t step on the field with more than six minutes left and the game in hand, or so I thought.
After watching Shelley pick apart, dismantle and beat up Fruitland to the tune of 37-10 in the 3A state championship Friday night, I learned otherwise.
Media pundits and fans surmised Fruitland and Shelley might have been the best championship game last Friday night. Everyone assumed that Goliath title match between two undefeated teams was a classic football game waiting to happen. It was like the Alabama vs. LSU of Idaho high school football.
Shelley head coach Travis Hobson thought it’d be quite the game, too.
“I took bets last night and I thought we’d win by a score or less,” he said. “I thought it’d be a dog fight all the way through.”
If it was a dog fight then the Russets were a rottweiler and the Grizzlies were a Jack Russell terrier.
It’s not that we underestimated Fruitland’s quality. Rather, we just hadn’t accepted that no one — repeat, no one — at the 3A level could hang with Shelley. When the Russets have it going — and they had it going from the opening kickoff against the Grizzlies — they’re close to flawless.
“I don’t think we had a single weak spot on defense this week,” Hobson said. “They gave it everything. I don’t know what to say.”
How well did the defense play?
Before taking on Shelley, Fruitland had averaged 44 points a game. Three weeks ago, the Grizzlies hung 71 points on Kellogg in the first round of the playoffs. Their quarterback, Joe Martarano, is listed at 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, but in person, he looks about two Whoppers shy of 250.
And in Fruitland’s first 11 games of the year, he regularly ran over defenders like a life long Hostess lover going after the last box of Twinkies.
“We were going to have to have 11 guys in on the tackle and we got eight or nine every time,” Hobson said. “He didn’t like that very much.”
Who would? It can’t be fun to have Russet linebackers like Trevin Swensen and Chad Leckington hunt you down like you besmirched the good name of the Idaho potato.
“Our linebackers have been studs all year,” said senior wide receiver McKay Cannon.
Swensen and Leckington didn’t just dominate on one side of the ball, either. Swensen, a lineman, and Leckington, the quarterback, along with their teammates, were equally impressive on offense.
Fruitland allowed 10 points per game in its run to the championship. Shelley finished with 37. The Grizzlies went an entire month during the season without giving up that many points.
“We studied for these guys more than we studied for anybody else this year,” Hobson said. “I thought we knew their tendencies better than anybody else.”
Hobson hints at the real secret to Shelley’s success. It was never easy for the Russets.
Like the famous sports quote goes, “Athletes don’t win a championship on the night of a big event but years before by athletes who dedicate themselves to daily to championship principles.”
Cannon — who returned an interception for a score and had one receiving — said afterwards, “This senior class, it’s been our goal since we stepped in as freshmen. We finally got it our senior year.”
The Russets finished the year 12-0 and answered every question anyone could have of their team. But I could think of one more.
Who wants to see Blackfoot and Shelley go at it in one final game of the year?
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