HIGHLANDS RANCH — On the football field, like seemingly everything else at Valor Christian — just a 2-year-old high school — things move quickly.
So it was on Friday night. With last year’s 40-0 shellacking at the hands of Conifer still fresh in their minds, the Eagles gained a measure of revenge, taking a 21-6 home win.
“We don’t want a repeat of what happened last year,” receiver Blake Froistad said.
“That’s kind of our incentive every week,” added quarterback Brock Berglund.
Only 4-6 a year ago, Valor improved to 3-0 with Friday’s win, a victory spurred in large part by Berg-lund and Froistad. On the second play of the game, the duo combined on an 87-yard touchdown pass, then connected on a 5-yard score two plays into the second quarter. In the fourth, with the Eagles shakily maintaining a 14-6 advantage, Berglund and Froistad struck again, this time from 33 yards out.
With a roster that includes only eight seniors, Valor coach Brent Vieselmeyer says his Class 3A team often blissfully goes about its paces, unaware of the pressures that often accompany high school football.
“There are times when I have to remind them that they’re about to play a big game,” he said.
To emphasize that point, before Friday’s game the Valor coaching staff gathered the team for a showing of some of the lowlights of last year’s contest, a game in which the Lobos accumulated almost 500 yards total offense.
That didn’t happen this time, in part because Conifer (2-1) couldn’t keep its hands on the football long enough to do much damage. In that sense, the only memories of last season that Friday’s three lost-fumbles performance conjured up was the opening-round playoff loss to Windsor, in which the Lobos lost the ball seven times on turnovers.
“We put the ball on the ground too many times,” Conifer coach Larry Fitzmaurice said. “I can’t say enough about our defense. They played great but just got tired.”
Despite Valor’s big plays, the Lobos allowed only eight first downs.
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com
