North Fayette Valley passes its way to 2A championship

CEDAR FALLS – A football team that considers ‘pass' to be a true four-letter word used it Friday afternoon to become an eight-letter word.

Champion.

It was Josh Mackey's 2-yard touchdown run in fourth-quarter crunch time that gave North Fayette Valley a 14-10 win over Sioux Center in the Class 2A state football title game at the UNI-Dome. That was typical TigerHawks, who pound, pound, pound away at you relentlessly.

But it was a pair of almost out-of-the-blue, atypical NFV pass plays that set up that score.

'We take our shots,” said North Fayette Coach Bob Lape. 'It's not like we're not a throwing team. We work on throwing as much as anybody else in the state, except we want to choose when we throw it, not have to throw it. When you make us throw, when we get to the spot when we have to throw, we can't do it. We're better off when we want to do it.”

Lape chose to do it from deep inside his own territory. On 2nd-and-9 from the NFV 15, quarterback Trevor Hurd lofted a bomb over the middle of the field to wide open Derrick Kuehner for a 35-yard gain.

The ball was slightly overthrown, with Kuehner laying out to make a beautiful catch.

'I was supposed to run a post route, but their safety bit down on (teammate) Josh Mackey, so I just ran a skinny post,” Kuehner said. 'I was wide open.”

The biggest grab of his life?

'Oh, I believe so,” Kuehner said. 'At a moment like that, too. '

A holding penalty moved North Fayette Valley back into its own territory later in the drive, but Lape dialed up another perfect pass play: a screen to Austin DeMuth that went for 31 yards to the Sioux Center 29. Hurd would sneak for two yards to convert a 4th-and-1, then ran a sweep play for nine yards to the 2.

Mackey scored on the next play to put NFV (13-1) on top with 6:03 left and for the first time all game.

'I worked hard in the summer trying to do good with passing,” said Hurd, who completed 4 of 5 for 100 yards. It was a 25-yard aerial strike to Nick Baumler that set up North Fayette's first touchdown, a 1-yard Mackey plunge late in the second quarter.

'I understand that we might not be a pass team all the time, but when we need to pass, we can do it,” Hurd said. 'We showed that we could do it. It felt good. I had confidence that I was going to be able to make the throws they were going to ask me to make. My number got called, and I just did my best.”

'We definitely love the run, but that does not mean that we can't pass,” said Mackey. 'We keep pounding, get up to 10 guys in the box, then we play action. That's how we got Derrick open.”

North Fayette Valley came into championship weekend the state's top rushing team. Sioux Center (12-2) made it tough for the TigerHawks to run, yet they finished with 200 yards on 60 attempts.

NFV finished with a 13-minute advantage in time of possession. This was the school's first state football championship, in just its second year of existence.

North Fayette won it all in 1992. It combined with Valley (Elgin) for the 2013 school year.

'I couldn't be more proud of everybody in the program,” Lape said. 'There are about seven of these kids who are three-year starters for us, so it's unbelievable. I kept telling them that if we keep everybody together, keep working in the offseason, good things will happen. Here's the end result.”

Sioux Center scored on the opening possession of the game, a 33-yard screen pass from Chris Borchers to Graham Zomermaand. But NFV's defense knuckled down after that, holding the Warriors to 121 yards the rest of the way.

A Kuehner fumble at the NFV 16 put Sioux Center in business in the dying seconds of the third quarter, but the Warriors had to settle for an Alfonso Reyes 32-yard field goal.

'They came out and hit a couple of big plays on us,” Mackey said. 'We knew what our keys were, so we had to make sure we were keeping making plays. Just fly to the ball. I don't think we came out absolutely ready right away.”

Mackey finished with 140 yards rushing on 39 attempts. Touted sophomore lineman Juan Harris played both ways for NFV.

The 6-foot-3, 360-pound sophomore is considered a high-profile college recruit being wooed by Alabama, among others. He moved from Wisconsin to live with his father in West Union and just became eligible to play in last week's playoff semifinals.

'Obviously he's a strong player,” Lape said. 'There's no secret about that. We've had him all year, he's played JV with us, been around the kids all year. Now imagine trying to block him, go against him on the scout team. So he has helped us. Playing him today on defense, we weren't planning on that. I've got to give him credit. He's in a little better shape than I thought he was in to play four quarters like that.”

l Comments: (319) 398-8259; jeff.johnson@thegazette.com