Aidan Atkinson leads No. 7 Fairview football past rival Boulder
BOULDER — Fairview football lost more than 3,500 yards and 41 touchdowns from a talented receiving group that graduated last year.
Good luck dealing with that type of turnover.
Right?
Uh, wrong. Dead wrong.
Back is talented quarterback Aidan Atkinson, who set the single-season passing touchdown record last season and has committed to Northwestern. And a reloaded receiving corps looked every bit as talented as the 2018 crew as the seventh-ranked Knights rolled past rival Boulder in a season-opening 49-14 win on Thursday.
“The trigger man, obviously, in Aidan is very good. I think the new guys, they compete hard on every play, and he’s going to find them,” said longtime Fairview coach Tom McCartney, who picked up his 182nd career win. “It’s nice having Aidan.”
Said Atkinson: “We do so much stuff in the offseason, whether it’s 7-on-7s, practice, lifting, all that stuff. Our chemistry has been built over the past six months, and tonight we were able to show what we wanted to do.”
Fairview scored on its first four drives as it built a 28-0 lead with 10:54 to play in the second quarter.
“We talked about it all week,” McCartney said of starting fast. “It was the first game of the year, on a short week, on a Thursday. We try to have fire in practice on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and we wanted to get an early start. We were fortunate to get ahead on the scoreboard.”
Atkinson threw for 339 yards and five touchdowns, spreading the wealth out to seven different receivers, as the star senior picked up exactly where he left off, when a thumb injury ended his junior year in the final regular season game of 2018.
“I thought we executed pretty well,” Atkinson said. “I thought we definitely have a lot of things to clean up for next week. But for Week 1, with the guys that we brought out here, and the intensity and the fire that we brought against our rival, I was pleased with tonight and how it went.”
Atkinson showed off his arm, especially his accuracy, in the win. A 3-yard touchdown pass to sophomore Grant Page came as he was scrambling to his right, with the throw coming across his body and threading three defenders in the back of the end zone. Later, a 22-yard pass to Adam Moser was lofted perfectly over the junior’s left shoulder en route to another score.
“We practice that stuff all the time, scramble drill, and our receivers are constantly working on when I’m flushed out of the pocket,” Atkinson said. “Our receivers do a great job with that kind of stuff.”
Atkinson certainly had plenty of talent to throw to. Moser finished with a team-high 135 yards on six catches, and also hauled in two touchdowns. Devynn Holly, the starting running back, also had six catches, for 72 yards.
Grant Page, a sophomore who didn’t have a catch last season, hauled in two scores — and added a third touchdown on an offensive fumble recovery. His older brother, Jalen, a basketball star, joined the football team this season — and he caught four passes for 33 yards in his first game.
It was Fairview’s 12th-consecutive win in the rivalry game, having won every matchup since the 2008 season.
“As a kid growing up here, you’re choosing between Monarch, Centaurus, Fairview and Boulder,” Atkinson said. “And we take this game personally.”
Grant Page said, “It’s the city championship. All those players, I’ve played with a bunch of them in youth football. Just knowing that I can beat one of my teammates, it’s fun. It’s like the state championship.”
McCartney is certainly no stranger to the rivalry, and he is a huge fan of it.
“We love playing it,” McCartney said. “It means the world to us. We always want to have fire. We wanted to be at our best. To us, it’s a red-letter game on our schedule. It’s big-time for us, and that’s how we treat it.”
Boulder was led by senior quarterback Hale Chargois, who threw for 133 yards and rushed for 54, including a 2-yard touchdown.
The Panthers, who went 4-6 a year ago in Ryan Bishop’s first year as coach, look to be much improved. Their roster has grown from 35 players just a few years ago to more than 70 this season.
