Rifle – With his No. 8 barely visible beneath the mud caked to his jersey, Florence running back Brandon Ridgeway jumped to his feet after a 9-yard run and shouted, “They can’t stop us!”
Those words proved true enough as the Huskies ground down Rifle to win the Class 3A state football championship game 35-14 on Saturday on a sloppy field in front of a standing-room-only crowd at Bears Stadium.
Ridgeway scored three touchdowns and ran for 160 yards, and sophomore Garrett Wilson racked up another 156 yards to give Florence its second state title in four years.
“When we get moving, when we move down the field and score a touchdown early in the game, we are unstoppable,” Ridgeway said.
Florence (13-1) played a clean game on a nasty surface, with one turnover and just three penalties, to knock off the defending state champions, who were playing the title game on their home field for the second year in a row. The conditions were about the same – snowy, muddy, icy and cold – but the outcome was much different.
Rifle (9-5) beat Sterling 7-6 in last season’s title game after slipping into the postseason with the Western Slope League’s final playoff berth.
The Bears, a team with almost all new starters, earned the fourth seed again and went on an inspiring run through the playoffs. But Florence, with the top-scoring offense in 3A, was just too much.
The Huskies went 65 yards on their first drive with Ridgeway scoring from a yard out. Rifle went for it on fourth down on its first drive, but the Florence defense stopped the Bears at midfield to set up another touchdown drive.
“There was no doubt that this game wasn’t going to be a battle of punts, so we thought we would go for it there,” first-year Rifle coach Damon Wells said.
After Rifle jumped offside on fourth-and-1 from the Bears’ 8-yard line, quarterback Jeremy Young found tight end Domonic Torri in the middle of the end zone to take a 14-point lead.
The Bears responded on the next series when Tyler Gose connected with Bryce Enewold on a 22-yard pass play. Tyler Thompson finished the drive with a hard-nosed run up the middle for a 14-yard touchdown early in the second quarter.
After the teams traded punts, Florence started another drive and looked on the verge of another score when Ridgeway took an option pitch and turned upfield. But he was upended on the 1 and fumbled the ball out of bounds in the end zone, giving the ball to Rifle on the 20.
“We thought we should have got that touchdown in the corner where they said that Ridgeway fumbled, but we forgot about that and kept playing,” said Young, who completed 6-of-9 passes for 62 yards.
Rifle’s big opportunity was for naught, however, as Michael Roberts stole the ball from Andrew Schmidt for an interception, Roberts’ 10th of the season. Thirteen plays later, Ridgeway scored a 1-yard touchdown near the end of the first half.
MVP
Florence senior Brandon Ridgeway was pumped up from the opening kickoff, and it showed. With solid footing at a premium, Ridgeway hardly seemed to notice, carrying 23 times for 160 yards and three touchdowns. The senior finished the season with 1,558 yards on the ground and 28 touchdowns.
