Friday football recap: Legacy opens season with ‘young’ team, gets win

This year’s Legacy football team looks a lot different than the Longhorns squad that won the 5A Division III state title in 2023.

And even though Legacy played an “imperfect game,” as coach Zach Monticelli put it, the younger faces and new players with bigger roles came through for the Longhorns.

Legacy received key contributions from several players across multiple facets of the game and pulled away for a 48-22 home win over Losee on Friday night.

“We’re young and we had a couple of young guys grow up tonight,” Monticelli said. “Then also those same young guys made mistakes tonight, but they’re learning from their mistakes. We’re still getting better.”

Legacy led big early, 28-8, then Losee started chipping away. Losee scored with 15 seconds left in the first half and returned the opening kickoff of the second half for a score to cut Legacy’s lead to 28-22.

Then the Longhorns defense came up with several key plays. Senior Maurice Collins had a pick-six and returned a fumble recovery for a score. The Longhorns came up with four second-half turnovers.

“We were pretty sloppy, but we have kids that work hard, so I think we got our best football ahead of us,” Monticelli said.

Senior running back Zaione Henderson, one of the few returners who played on the 2023 title team, rushed for 175 yards and two touchdowns. Sophomore Ky’Ree Perkins caught two touchdown passes from sophomore quarterback JaeLynn Love-Carter, and Cameron Turner added a rushing touchdown.

Monticelli said Losee “controlled the line of scrimmage” and credited Lions running back Kieran Daniel, saying “he’s one of the better players in town.”

Legacy will now prepare for back-to-back games against out-of-state opponents. The Longhorns play at Highland (Idaho) next week and host Victor Valley (California) the following week.

While many teams didn’t play this week, Monticelli said playing in the opening week of the season is just a way for him to give his players as many opportunities to play.

“I just want to give my kids every opportunity to show the talents they have, so that’s why we choose to play 10 games every year,” Monticelli said. “ We want people to see the hard work they put in, and I owe it to them to make sure we have 10 games.”

Knocking off rust

Playing on opening night is also a great opportunity to knock off any rust. While Las Vegas High defeated Palo Verde 33-20, the Wildcats didn’t play a perfect game.

Quarterback Tanner Vibabul shined, completing 10 of 17 passes for 237 yards and two touchdowns, and adding 196 rushing yards and two scores. But he had three fumbles and an interception.

Las Vegas coach Jose Cerriteno was optimistic that the senior will put those mistakes behind him.

“He played well. We got to clean up our mesh point offensively, a lot of that is going to come down to him and he’ll tell you that,” Cerriteno said. “But we’re expecting big things of Tanner. He’s a really good player and if we can get everyone around him to play really well, I think we’ve got a chance to be competitive.”

Vibabul’s dual-threat ability makes him one of the best quarterbacks in the state. That was evident on the first play of the fourth quarter with Las Vegas holding a one-score lead. Vibabul took the snap, kept the ball on the read option and outran the entire Palo Verde defense for an 87-yard touchdown. That started a wild fourth quarter when Vibabul later threw an 80-yard touchdown that proved to be the deciding score.

“We don’t like to look at our mistakes, we just want to learn from them,” said Vibabul, who has Division I offers from Air Force, Arkansas State, Temple and Army. “It was easy for us to put it behind us and we knew what we could have been doing. We just needed a little bit of time to get into it.”

Other notable performances

Basic was one of the only other local teams to get a win Friday night. The Wolves got strong performances from quarterback Jayveon Rose, Louden Cahill and Max Ramos to roll past Canyon Springs 35-6.

Democracy Prep shut out Sunrise Mountain 48-0 and showed the Blue Knights could contend in 3A, as other league contenders Virgin Valley, Moapa Valley and Boulder City all lost. In 5A competition, Faith Lutheran lost a close game to Desert Hills (Utah) and Foothill fell to Millikan (California).

But no one had a better Friday than Coronado boys soccer standout Gavin Flickinger, who scored eight goals in the Cougars’ two wins in a tournament in Tahoe on Friday. Flickinger, who scored a state-record 60 goals last season, had five goals in Coronado’s 7-0 win over Sparks and then followed with a three-goal performance in a 10-0 win over Reed. Coronado is seeking a third straight 5A state title and has won 32 straight games entering Saturday.

Up next

The rest of the valley hits the gridiron next Friday. Bishop Gorman, ranked No. 2 nationally by USA Today and No. 3 by MaxPreps, opens Class 5A Desert League play at Centennial at 7 p.m. Friday

Arbor View, which lost to Gorman in last year’s 5A Division I state title game, hosts Mililani (Hawaii) at 6 p.m. Friday. Liberty plays at Skyridge (Utah) at 7 p.m.

Other notable games include Canyon Springs at Clark and Foothill at Mojave at 6 p.m., and Las Vegas hosts Basic at 7 p.m.

Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.