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Battle Mountain football opens with a win

Battle Mountain's Wyatt Harwood (33) runs to daylight during the season opener against Middle Park. Little did he know then that he would win his school's Senior Award on Wednesday.
Rex Keep | Daily file photo |

GRANBY — Welcome to Colorado, Coach Lohrey.

Battle Mountain football had a 30-minute lightning delay before its opener at Middle Park before the Huskies busted out some thunder in a 50-14 win over the Panthers on Friday night.

“I’m no different than any coach. A win is tough to get. I don’t care who you’re playing,” Huskies coach Cliff Lohrey said. “We’re excited about the win. We also told our team, not to take anything away from Middle Park who played real well, that we’re going to be playing better competition next week and we have a lot to work on.”



Nonetheless, Battle Mountain football started nicely as Wyatt Harwood capped the first drive of the season with a 16-yard rumble for a touchdown. That was the first of three scores for the senior running back.

Quarterback Demetrius Parrish renewed acquaintances with receiver Chase Keep on a 75-yard strike for an early 13-0 lead. Though Keep missed the extra point, he did follow with a 38-yard field goal that bumped the Huskies’ margin to 16-6.

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Battle Mountain went into the half up 22-14, thanks to a 68-yard Harwood burst for six.

The Huskies blew it open in the second half with two more touchdown passes from Parrish. He found Zane Hensel for 38 yards and then returned to Keep for 40 and the Huskies were cruising, 36-14. Harwood added his third and Chance Archuletta bruised his way 28 yards for the final score.

On the defensive side of the ball Hensel and Parrish both had red-zone interceptions to stop Middle Park drives.

“They always say a team’s biggest improvement is from Week 1 to Week 2,” Lohrey said. “Midway through the third quarter, we already started to pick up on some things that we were doing wrong. The players were tired of not being successful and decided to do something about it.”

And while Battle Mountain will never throw back a win, coach Lohrey said there’s a lot of work to do. He joked that Battle Mountain “may have set a national high school record for penalty yardage,” and that will have to be cleaned up, among other things.

‘It’s A Huge Game’

Of course next up for the Huskies is a visit from Eagle Valley. It’s a nonconference game, but nobody cares.

“It’s certainly a huge game,” the coach said. “I was made aware of how big of a rivalry it is from Day 1. To be honest, we have to do a better job of making it a rivalry. A rivalry needs to be competitive and we have to start making it a competitive game.”

Sports Editor Chris Freud can be reached at 970-748-2934, cfreud@vaildaily.com and @cfreud.


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