Durango kicks off season with long-awaited shutout victory

By Jesse Granger

Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016 | 10:40 p.m.

Fans were able to quench their 8-month-long thirst for high school football Thursday night, as Durango and Valley High kicked off the 2016 season under the lights.

The Durango Trailblazers were able to quench a much longer thirst, as they earned their first win in 17 games with a 40-0 destruction of the Vikings.

“It feels great,” said sophomore quarterback Kaden Renshaw. “We haven’t been 1-0 in a long time, so it feels good going back to school 1-0 with all of the students and everybody happy.”

The players start class Monday and can stroll the hallways with confidence after snapping the 23-month-long winless drought.

“It’s been hard on a lot of the staff, the coaches and the players especially. The ridicule and stuff they had to take,” Durango coach Matt Gerber said. “They have taken a lot of crap the last few years ... and they don’t have to take it on Monday. They get to hold their head high, and hopefully we get a few more of these this year.”

The Trailblazers drove straight down the field on their opening drive, and Renshaw ran into the end zone from 21 yards out to go up 7-0.

On Valley’s opening drive, the Vikings went backward before the long snapper sent the snap sailing over Iyen Medlock’s head out of the end zone for a safety.

It only got worse from there.

Durango running back Jayson Johnson punched it in from 2 yards out to give the Trailblazers a commanding 16-0 lead after one quarter.

“It set the tone and it was good for the offense to make mistakes and still be able to score,” Gerber said. “And then for the defense to come out and be able to get a score, that let us know that we had this ball game in control.”

Durango racked up 237 yards of offense in the first half, while holding the Vikings to minus-11.

Renshaw began airing it out in the second quarter, finding Kevin O’Neill for a 36-yard touchdown pass, and Alhaji-Ibrahim Kamara for a 46-yard score.

“I knew they had one good safety, so I just had to read the safety and my boys would catch it so all I had to do was throw it up to them,” Renshaw said.

In his first ever start the sophomore completed 2-of-4 passes for 82 yards and 2 touchdowns.

“The kid is a playmaker. He has all the intangibles,” Gerber said. “He’s smart. He’s tough. He’s quick. He’s levelheaded. He’s got a good arm. He’s a little short on height but he’s only a sophomore. He’s my guy and I’m excited to have him.”

Senior back Jayson Johnson carried the ball seven times for 31 yards and a pair of touchdown runs, and fellow senior back Kamara pitched in 39 yards on the ground.

“(Kamara) is a kid that we didn’t have last year,” Gerber said. “He missed time and he was one of the seniors that we were able to get back out on the field and healthy. We had a team that we knew we had something this year.”

Every time Valley quarterback Sonny Gibson dropped back to pass he was met by a gang of Durango defenders.

The Trailblazers sacked Gibson five times and held him to 2-of-7 for 11 yards through the air.

“The pass rush was good,” Gerber said. “Our goal coming into this game was to stay fresh because we knew their lines were going both ways the entire game. We knew it was just a matter of time if we just kept fresh and kept pushing.”

Sophomore linebacker Allen Martin sacked Gibson twice in the first half and was in on multiple tackles in the backfield.

“It was big,” Martin said. “My coach puts it in my head all the time that the quarterback is my main focus, so at all times I have to pursue him.”

Durango enjoyed being on the right side of a running clock for the entire second half and will now have a bye week to bask in its win before taking on Del Sol Sept. 9.

“It’s been fun to build this,” Gerber said. “We’ve been building to this point, starting with young guys and feeding kids into the program. That’s all you want to see from your team is being able to go out on the field and know that you can compete.”