HIGHLANDS RANCH — Mountain Vista, an unstoppable football machine, has put Class 5A on championship notice.
In front of a sellout, standing-room-only crowd at Halftime Help Stadium on Friday, with fans spilling into the aisles and peering over the fences, Mountain Vista met the moment — and more — in its highly anticipated homecoming game against Valor Christian.
The Golden Eagles raced to a 27-0 lead early in the second quarter, and Mountain Vista’s explosive offense didn’t let up en route to a 62-21 boat race that is a record for points scored against Valor Christian. Post Preps No. 2 Mountain Vista was previously 0-8 against No. 4 Valor Christian, but its first win over its league rival came with authority in a statement game.
Friday night’s beatdown, on top of five blowout victories to start the season, improved Mountain Vista to 6-0 as the Golden Eagles played like the top team in Class 5A. MVHS has never won a state title in football, but its play Friday suggested it should be considered a favorite to do so this season.
With Mountain Vista wearing all-black uniforms and black helmets with Oregon-style white feathers, Golden Eagles senior QB Austyn Modrzewski turned in yet another Marcus Mariota impression. Modrzewski threw for four first-half TDs and ran for another, then poured it on in the second half, with two more touchdowns as Valor Christian had no answer for his arm and 400-plus yards passing.
The Eagles were flattened by the run, too, as speedy and shifty senior running back Jack Blais went over 100 yards. Blais had two scores by ground and another by air as Mountain Vista ripped off TDs on all eight of its possessions.
Elam Parises got the Golden Eagles going with a 12-yard TD catch on a screen, bruising through several defenders at the goal line for the game’s first score on the opening possession. Modrzewski added a three-yard TD run and an 87-yard dime dropped right into the outstretched arms of Sean Conway to make it 20-0 by the end of the opening quarter.
At that point, Valor Christian had just one first down, via penalty, and six yards of total offense through three drives. The Eagles were discombobulated on their second drive, when referees made multiple linemen come out of the game because they didn’t have knee pads in. That, in addition to an offsides penalty when the Eagles were lined up to go for it on fourth-and-2, killed their only momentum of the frame.
A methodical drive by Mountain Vista, capped by Blais’ three-yard TD run, extended the lead to 27-0 early in the second quarter.
Valor Christian finally found some life after that, scoring twice within 10 seconds. Cash Spence had a four-yard TD run, then Mountain Vista muffed the ensuing kickoff and the Eagles recovered. The play after that, Spence came up big again, with a 32-yard TD catch off the hand of QB Dawson Olk.
But the Mountain Vista offense couldn’t be taken out of hyperspeed.
Modrzewski scrambled and found Blais for a 72-yard touchdown pass, and the Golden Eagles responded to another Valor Christian score with a long kickoff return by Jakhai Mack and another Modrzewski TD pass, this time to Conway. That made it 41-21 at half.
The script remained the same in the second half.
After Mountain Vista snuffed out a promising Valor Christian drive with a gang-sack on fourth down, Modrzewski & Co. went right back to work. On a drive where they had two TDs wiped off the board due to a penalty, the Golden Eagles still found the end zone anyway via Blais’ two-yard scoring run to push the lead to 48-21 midway through the third.
The Golden Eagles added yet another score with 15 seconds left in the third, capitalizing on cornerback Bryce Bailey’s interception. Jakhai Mack took a short swing pass and made three Eagles miss en route to a 20-yard TD catch.
Then, senior middle linebacker Carter Daniels — the heart and soul of the Golden Eagles defense who had already made his presence felt in a big way on the night — picked up a fumble from about 15 yards out and rumbled in for a scoop-and-score on the final play of the third quarter. That prompted a running clock for the final quarter.
By this point, at 62-21, the fan section for Valor Christian (5-1) had thinned. But the black-clad Golden Eagles crowd remained in full force up to the final buzzer of the historic win.
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