Welcome back, readers from around Northern Arizona, the rest of the state, and regions beyond, to another season of Notes from the North!

This special edition comes as 2A and 3A Conference football programs are scheduled to kick off tonight, Friday, Aug. 27.

State eight-man football season is already under way: Joseph City High School scored 52 points in its home opener, but still fell by four points to Anthem Preparatory Academy. 

Kelden Holmes, a quarterback at Mohave Accelerated Learning Center, outgunned Bagdad High School sophomore signal-caller Shane Hooper in a 60-42 home win. Holmes threw for six touchdowns--four of them to fellow upperclassman Aden Honegger--and nearly 300 yards while Hooper threw for 229 but was intercepted four times...

But the dominant 1A teams again appear to be defending champ Mogollon and 2020 state runner-up Williams, winners by 68-6 and 58-6 respective blowouts in road openers for both schools. Juniors Danny Siegfried and Drew Logan combined for five Viking touchdowns in Williams' crushing of Cicero Prep in Scottsdale...

For the viable 11-man programs across Northern Arizona, season openers are highly-anticipated for an all-new reason: They are fortunate to be played at all.

“Viable” is the key word, as several programs, after being shut down for a year, have struggled to emerge from under the COVID-19 cloud with the state just reporting its one millionth case of the virus.

Already, as of Friday, Aug. 27’s scheduled season openers, four programs are done for the fall--and quite possibly the foreseeable future--with five other teams facing an uncertain schedule after being forced to cancel their initial matchups due to positive Coronavirus tests among coaching staff and players.

New 2A region may dissolve after losing 3 teams

Three of those teams forced to cancel virtually all fall sports just happen to be in the new San Juan Region, formed to conserve the considerable travel expenses incurred by 2A high schools in Arizona’s Four Corners region, around the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado.

Greyhills Academy was the first casualty--shutting down its fall offerings in July--although it remains unclear whether the cancellation of football was entirely COVID-related or more of a casualty of declining enrollment, not to mention extracurricular participation, in a program winless since 2018...

Less than a week before their opener, Rock Point and Many Farms high schools followed suit, with the latter Lobos at least hanging on to a fall sports foothold by continuing to field boys and girls cross-country teams.

Still, the cancellation of fall sports by three teams from the former Little Colorado Region leaves the remaining three San Juan schools in a precarious position--in several different respects...

Red Mesa High School needs help, and needs it yesterday. The Redskins have already cancelled their scheduled home opener with Miami as well as a Saturday, Sept. 4, morning road date at Scottsdale Preparatory Academy. 

That leaves Red Mesa with just five games remaining on its fall football schedule.

The school, as of Thursday, Aug. 26, continued to advertise vacancies for a head girls cross country coach as well as head and assistant football coaches. This comes less than two years after Region Coach of the Year Pita Olomua led the Redskins to an 8-2 finish and second place in the Little Colorado Region.

If those positions remain unfilled, the school would be forced to cancel the respective sports, leaving only Hopi and Piñon high schools standing in the San Juan. 

The Eagles, too, have cancelled their Aug. 27 football opener at Chinle High School. Piñon has just six games remaining on its fall 2021 football schedule. Even if no other games are cancelled, the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s power rankings for both teams from a two-team region would be unbalanced…

All of these circumstances are unfolding while 3A North Region high school Ganado struggles for a football season of its own on the Navajo Nation. 

After COVID axed two of their first three games with Holbrook and Rock Point, the Hornets will attempt to open their fall Friday, Sept. 3, at defending state champ Snowflake...

Finally, on the Fort Apache Reservation, Whiteriver’s Alchesay High School is also scrambling for football opponents after its home opener with Window Rock was cancelled.

Piñon would be the Falcons’ first opponent Friday, Sept. 17, after COVID-positive tests from at least one Alchesay coach and several players earlier this month also forced the cancellation of their Sept. 3 home game with San Carlos High School.    

COVID forced the consolidation of a number of football teams into other regions in 2020. It appears likely to do the same this fall, at least with Northern Arizona’s 2A programs. The silver lining to this cloud is that, as of their season openers Tuesday, Aug. 31, smaller team sports at other Northern Arizona schools that haven’t issued blanket cancellations of all fall sports have not yet had their schedules affected... 

High school football out in Sedona

Irretrievably, low numbers, not any virus, doomed Sedona Red Rock High School the May before last. It was then, at an end-of-school-year board meeting in 2020, that the Sedona-Oak Creek Unified School District determined not to offer football that coming fall.

The fall of 2021, as it turned out, would prove no different, as the Scorpions were up against far more than pandemic protocols: a program operating at a five-figure deficit with no head coach and not enough of a fall roster to support an eight-man team, let alone a 2A Verde Region program.

As early as 2017, Sedona Red Rock High School had struggled to keep an overall enrollment of more than 300 students and had been forced to cancel football games due to roster numbers that struggled to climb above 14 players.

For the past decade, Sedona coaches had been issuing regular warnings that, with families being priced out of the area, any healthy football program was unsustainable. Following the April 2020 resignation of Verde Valley legend Bob Young after two seasons as head coach, Red Rock’s showpiece stadium will remain empty of football crowds for a second straight fall…

Moncibaez to be the new man at Mingus

Young’s long-time program he built into a 4A Conference state champ at Mingus Union High School will have its third new head coach in four years Friday, Sept. 3, when the Marauders travel to Thunderbird High School in north Phoenix for their season opener against the Titans.

Dave Moncibaez, a successful physical education teacher and cross-country, golf and girls basketball coach at Sedona Red Rock and at Mingus, will get his shot to lead Marauders football after being an assistant in the program. 

One-year head coach Doug Provenzano, who had been commuting to Cottonwood his first season after being hired from Barry Goldwater High School, resigned Aug. 18 to be closer to his family, and Moncibaez admits he’s been “playing a bit of catch up” heading into the imminent opener.

Young, who will continue to be the bear of the Grand Canyon Region as head coach at Bradshaw Mountain High School, retired as Mingus head football coach in 2018. After a 9-3 season the following fall, the Marauders have gone just 1-16 since...

With football in doubt for the foreseeable future at Sedona, and Camp Verde High School just 7-15 entering its fourth season under former Red Rock and Mingus coach Rick Walsworth, the Verde Valley’s two remaining football programs could benefit from stability, particularly while the pandemic threat still lingers.

Camp Verde has given Walsworth time to build a winner. Hopefully Mingus, after the revolving door of the post-Bob Young era, will give Moncibaez as much, if not more, time to do the same, as he joins Sean Manning, at Flagstaff, as first-year head football coaches in the Grand Canyon Region…

Next time

Check out tomorrow's coverage story from the Rez of Winslow High School's opener at Monument Valley, in the Mustangs' first game in over 16 months. Be on the lookout this weekend for my preview of the upcoming volleyball seasons in Northern Arizona in the 1A through 4A Conferences. Predictions of the 2A fall soccer seasons in the post-Mia Blair era will follow.

In the meantime, don’t forget: if you have other stories or tips on Northern Arizona prep players or coaches you feel deserve the spotlight, follow me on Facebook and Twitter at @ProfGWerner, or email me at gwerner@azpreps365.com.