Salpointe beat Pueblo 47-14 Friday night to move to 4-1 on the year. It was an important victory for the Lancers considering the strength of the Kino Region in the 4A Conference. A loss now would have made the path to the playoffs more difficult with Cienega (5-0), Canyon del 0ro (3-2) and Catalina Foothills (4-1) remaining on the Salpointe schedule.

Pueblo (3-2) played the Lancers tough early on but a bad snap on the opening drive and a personal foul later in the first half put the Warriors at a distinct disadvantage and Salpointe capitalized on the mistakes as good teams usually do.

Forced to punt on their opening drive, the Warriors gave Salpointe great field position when the snap flew over the punter’s head and was downed at the 10-yard line. Sean Barton found DeMarco Vasquez in the end zone two plays later and the Lancers led 6-0 (extra point failed).

The Warriors came right back and Dominick Carrillo scored on a 50-yard sprint to put Pueblo up 7-6. The lead wouldn’t hold very long with Trevor Volpe scoring the first of his four touchdowns to put Salpointe up 12-7 (2-point conversion failed).

Volpe, the son of former Amphitheater and Stanford great Jon Volpe, finished with only 28 yards rushing but he had a 45-yard dash called back in the first quarter due to offsetting penalties. Still, the younger Volpe was able to cap off four scoring drives.

Barton also came up big for the Lancers. He finished with 212 yards passing and 52 yards rushing with 31 of those rushing yards coming on a touchdown run on a fourth down to put Salpointe up 20-7. Still, the Warriors kept coming and Vega found Armando Lucero for 72 yards on the next drive to cut the score down to 20-14.

Volpe added an 8-yard run to make the score 26-14 at the half.

Barton came out of the half and hit freshman Bijan Robinson on the first play for 49 yards and that set up another scoring run by Volpe to make it 33-14 with 11:38 left in the third quarter.

Barton followed that up with a 24-yard pass to Vasquez to make it 40-14 heading to the fourth quarter and then Volpe scored his fourth TD to make it 47-14 with 6:06 left in the game. Pueblo sophomore Ruben Rivera IV closed out the scoring on a 9-yard run in the closing moments to bring us to the 47-21 final.

Rivera finished with 83 yards rushing, Lucero had 129 yards receiving and Vega finished with 148 yards passing. The Warriors gathered 341 total yards but they were unable to stop the Lancers on defense.

Salpointe punted only one time in the game while racking up 397 yards of offense. Vasquez collected 100 of Barton’s 212 yards passing, Arturo Alcaraz had 44 yards rushing and Mario Padilla added 43 more.

All games are important but the loss to Salpointe was not the end of the road for the Warriors with region play starting next week. Amphitheater (3-2) is expected to battle Pueblo for the Gila Region.