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Shadle Park flies past Central Valley

Shadle Park senior wide receiver Tanner Pauly sprints towards the endzone for one of his four touchdowns. He finished with nine catches for 208 yards on Friday. (Jesse Tinsley)
Shadle Park senior wide receiver Tanner Pauly sprints towards the endzone for one of his four touchdowns. He finished with nine catches for 208 yards on Friday. (Jesse Tinsley)Buy a print of this photo
By Mike Vlahovich mikev@spokesman.com(509) 927-2180

Two-minute offense? How about a half, or even a quarter of that.

Shadle Park’s touchdown-a-minute (and less) offense and timely defense was too much for host Central Valley to handle in the visitor’s 47-28 Greater Spokane League football win Friday night.

None of Shadle’s seven touchdown drives took more than two minutes to complete and most ended in less than a minute.

The loss was bad news for the beat-up Bears (5-3), but the good news is they play for the second 4A playoff berth at Gonzaga Prep next week.

The Highlanders (7-1) remained tied with Ferris atop the GSL and secured the top 3A seed when the postseason begins.

Brett Rypien threw for 442 yards and five touchdowns – four of them to Tanner Pauly, who had nine catches for 208 yards. Michael Morris, who rushed for 82 yards on 21 carries, scored the other two.

After the Bears took a 7-0 first quarter lead on a four-minute drive, Shadle scored in 36 seconds on a 51-yard Pauly reception. It took about a minute to go up 14-7 following a partially blocked punt.

After an interception late in the first half, the Highlanders took less than a minute to make it 21-14 at halftime.

A gutsy call by the Bears on fourth-and-1 at their 40 resulted in a 45-yard run by Hayden Wolrehammer to set up the tying score.

But Shadle broke the deadlock with three touchdowns in the final half of the third quarter, two coming 32 seconds apart.

The final drive took all of 30 seconds.

“They put three down linemen and tried to play man on us,” Pauly said.

“We practiced man all week and worked to exploit the open areas of their defense. We just run routes that get people open in different places.”

Pauly also hauled in touchdown catches of 40, 47 and 10 yards.

Not lost in the game was the stubborn Shadle defense rising up at opportune times.

It had three interceptions, a goal-line stand to start the fourth quarter and recovered what appeared to be an ambitious onside kick.

“The turnovers were in our favor this year,” coach Alan Stanfield said.

“The goal-line stand on the 5 was pivotal. It just changed the momentum. It really wasn’t so much an onside kick as to kick it on the ground hard and it just hit the guy’s leg.”

Central Valley lost several players to injury, two of them running backs, including Spencer Miller.

Quarterback Adam Chamberlain threw for 248 yards and rushed for 32 more.