Even with their differences, there was no reason for East head coach Jeff Nelson to have many conflicts of style with his assistant Dustin Lamb.
Both coaches got what they wanted at the Earl Barden All-Star Football Classic on June 24. Nelson got his pounding running attack out of Jeff Jack and J.C. Sherritt; Lamb aired it out behind quarterbacks Brandon Artz and Ray Valle.
So the two conflicting approaches melded into a 40-25 East win at Zaepfel Stadium. Lamb’s passing attack opened up a 33-6 lead by halftime, and Nelson’s grind-it-out style prevented the West from getting back into the game in the second half.
“We knew we had kids who had speed and who had power,” said Nelson, who coaches at LaCrosse-Washtucna. “We just had to let them go and we knew it would go fine.
“… I wouldn’t do anything different at all; I wouldn’t change one thing.”
Archbishop Murphy back Shiloh Keo scored two touchdowns for the West, rushing five times for 21 years and receiving five passes for 61 yards.
Keo played despite rolling his right ankle in practice earlier in the week.
“I wasn’t able to go 100 percent but I was still able to play,” he said. “I was thankful to have that chance. I could only run straightforward, but once the game started adrenaline kicked in and I said ‘hey, let’s do it’.”
In the second quarter, Keo sprinted 18 yards down the sideline, beating the East’s pursuit and dove into the end zone for the West’s first points.
On his second score, Keo caught a swing pass on the left side of the field and then juked and cut across the field. He flipped over an East safety to get into the end zone for a 27-yard score.
“The crowd was pretty into it,” Keo said. “It was probably one of the greatest plays (of the game) so it was pretty cool.”
Archbishop Murphy running back Stan Smith also made the West roster but was unable to play because of a pulled hamstring.
With five players from Royal to group together, Nelson divided the East’s offense into two platoons that would play one half each. Both were effective from the start with Grandview’s Brandon Artz — a student of Lamb’s wide-open air attack with the Greyhounds — passing for all 143 of his yards in the first half.
While he started out to a familiar target — two completions for 32 yards to Grandview wide receiver James Vela — Artz spread the wealth around to finish 8 of 14 with one touchdown rushing and another passing.
He even got to run a 2-minute drill to end the first half — a rarity in an all-star game because it usually requires more than one week of practice to develop the timing required. But Lamb couldn’t help himself with all the weapons at his disposal and Artz ran it perfectly.
With the East getting the ball on its own 31-yard line with 1 minute, 55 seconds remaining before the break, Artz covered the distance in three plays and 27 seconds. He found Pullman’s Ashton Gant, who made a couple moves after the grab for a 20-yard touchdown pass with 1:28 remaining.
This left enough time on the clock for the East defense to force a three-and-out and allow Valle and his platoon to set up Andrew Wilkerson’s 35-yard field goal to make the score 33-6 at halftime.
“We missed a few key tackles today,” said West coach Ron Lepper of Mount Baker. “We had only a week to put this team together and there are a lot of good athletes and plenty of talent on this team. We just had a few guys playing out of their usual positions.”
Keo, who will play for Idaho next season, is headed to Moscow for summer workouts and a 7-on-7 camp after July 4.
• Viva Mexico: Although Archbishop Murphy continued its string of placing athletes in the Barden Classic, at least one streak ended. For the first time since 2003, Wildcats coach Terry Ennis didn’t attend. Instead, he and 13 family members took a one-week trip to Mexico.
Ennis didn’t forget about football. He planned to meet with two Mexican coaches, one from Cancun and another from Mexico City. Ennis first met the coaches when he organized coaching clinics in Mexico the past two summers.
“I developed a friendship with them,” Ennis said, “so it will kind of be a business trip … but I haven’t told my wife yet.”
One of the Mexican coaches plans to visit the Archbishop Murphy campus this fall. Depending on how things go, it could spawn an international contest.
Said Ennis, “There may be a game in the future.”
The Herald’s Mike Cane and The Enterprise’s Tony Dondero contributed to this story.
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