LAKEWOOD — The Columbine coaching staff got into their players about the sluggish start against Arvada West on Friday as the No. 2 team in Class 5A found itself knotted at 14-all.
The “hoggies,” as the Rebels’ punishing offensive line is known, took it personally. Behind a dominant second-half performance up front, Columbine (8-0) whittled another team down to the bone in a 42-14 win at JeffCo Stadium with 28 unanswered points and a four-touchdown evening from senior running back Josh Snyder.
“We’re just wear ‘em down, roll ‘em over and are always the more physical ones, the harder workers and the ones that can just go longer in the game,” Snyder said.
Snyder and fellow back Mason Moreno churned carry after carry for positive yardage, and Arvada West had no answers up front. It led to Snyder’s scores, all of which were from inside the 10-yard line. The Rebels ran the ball 20 times in the second half and passed it just once, also for a score.
“I don’t think any other coaching program would’ve done it like we did today, where we’re up at half and we’re not happy at all,” Snyder said. “We were acting like we were down. But we knew we just had to battle back and persevere through the game. It’s special to be with this program, and it’s taught me a lot of life lessons.”
Columbine was expecting a pancake win after last week’s impressive 30-14 victory over Ralston Valley, but the breakthrough didn’t happen until midway through the third quarter. The Rebels made mistakes to open the game and punted in the opening two possessions.
“It was like we had 11 guys on offense and everybody was taking turns making a mistake,” Columbine head coach Andy Lowry said about the first half. “(Arvada West) played hard, physical and they’ve got some good and tough kids.”
Slowly but surely, the bedrock of Columbine’s success and why the Rebels had over 2,000 yards rushing entering Friday, started winning the battles up front and turned the tide in the third quarter.
“I think the M.O. is our offensive line, our tight ends and the fact that we’re blocking hard,” Lowry said. “These guys run hard, Josh and Mason, and with the guys up front it’s really a whole type of unit. We made a couple adjustments at halftime to help us out with it.”
Senior center Carlos Mendoza is one of the shorter members of the line, which features 10 players over 6 feet tall. Still, it’s the work ethic they show week in and week out and commitment to one another that has Columbine eager to bring home the bacon at the end of the season.
“The work we put in during practice, that’s what keeps us going,” Mendoza said about his fellow linemen. “That’s what makes us hoggies and putting people on people’s backs.
“You know what we came out here to do. We’re gonna run the ball and put it down your throat, so they should expect to know what to do.”
CHS backup quarterback Brennan Goodwin has stepped up in each of the last two games while the normal starter, senior Reeve Holiday, is still recovering from an emergency appendectomy surgery he had early last week. While the ground game was elite, Goodwin made sure to get on the scoreboard as he threw for his first career passing touchdown to Spencer Houle to put the game out of reach.
Columbine’s defense also came through. It did not allow the Wildcats (4-4) to get back into the game as it recovered a pair of fumbles including a strip sack from Moreno early in the fourth quarter, which set up the heave to Houle on the very next play.
With the bruisers up front and backs eager to grind teams into submission, it’s no wonder Columbine is a legitimate 5A title contender. But Snyder knows there are still two regular-season games remaining, and getting off to a slow start won’t cut it moving forward.
“The key will be to focus in practice, as it wasn’t our best week,” Snyder admitted. “We need to step that up and it’s what carries us on to our gameday performance. As we saw tonight, it wasn’t a great performance, but over the next two weeks we have to be great and then get on to playoffs.”
The Rebels will finish the regular season next Thursday against Lakewood (0-8) and then Oct. 27 against No. 9 Chatfield.
“We overlooked A-West and we need to get that fixed for sure,” Snyder said.
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