Nevada had the best night in American high school football on Friday and one of the worst weeks, and both were true at the same time.
In Las Vegas, Bishop Gorman built a 21-0 lead on St. John Bosco, lost every point of it, and won 38-28 on a 54-yard throw from Ace Amina to Corey Hinton Jr. with 6:49 left, in front of a standing-room crowd the Review-Journal counted past 5,000. That is No. 3 beating No. 2, and it is the result that reorders the top of the national board.
Then look at the rest of the state's Friday.
| Result | The read |
|---|---|
| No. 1 Bishop Gorman 38, St. John Bosco 28 | National No. 3 over national No. 2 |
| No. 2 Spanish Springs 35, Carson 7 | The defending 5A champion opens at Mackay Stadium |
| Carlsbad 24, No. 4 Arbor View 17 | 0-2, and both losses in California |
| No. 5 Churchill County 14, No. 9 Reed 13 | 2-0 by three total points, both on the road |
| Clovis West 48, No. 7 Bishop Manogue 14 | 0-2, by 34 |
| No. 8 Faith Lutheran 28, Bakersfield Christian 27 | The one California trip that worked |
| No. 10 Palo Verde 28, Legacy 26 | Survives by two |
Churchill County is 2-0 by three points and northern Nevada has noticed
The quietest team on the board keeps winning games nobody would script. Churchill County of Fallon beat Bishop Manogue 32-30 in week one and went to Sparks on Friday and beat Reed 14-13. Two road games, two wins, three total points of margin, both against teams inside the Nevada top ten.
We put the Greenwave on the board at No. 5 after week one because they beat the team we had ranked fifth in the preseason, and beating people is how a team gets on a board. Two weeks in that number looks conservative rather than generous. Churchill County is the defending Nevada 3A champion, per Nevada Sports Net, and it is title eligible this fall, which two of the four teams above it are not.
Bishop Manogue, meanwhile, is 0-2, and the first of those losses belongs to Fallon.
Bishop Manogue and Arbor View went to California and came back 0-2
Bishop Manogue, Arbor View and Faith Lutheran all went to California on Friday. One of them won.
Bishop Manogue lost 48-14 at Clovis West of Fresno, a 34-point defeat for a team ranked seventh in Nevada. No. 4 Arbor View lost 24-17 at Carlsbad, per the Review-Journal, and is also 0-2. Faith Lutheran was the exception, edging Bakersfield Christian 28-27. Off the board, Somerset Academy Losee lost 19-16 at Barstow.
That is a hard sentence to write about a state whose best program just beat the preseason No. 1 team in America, and both things belong in the same column.
Bishop Gorman is the most talked-about team in the sport this morning and it deserves to be. It is also, increasingly, a private school playing a national schedule in a state that cannot keep up with it. Every level of Nevada football below Gorman had a rough weekend against outside competition, and that is not a jab at anybody. It is a problem, and it is the kind that compounds: the fewer teams in the state that can test Gorman, the more its season depends on airports.
Palo Verde kept its footing, beating Legacy 28-26 behind 181 receiving yards and two touchdowns from X'Zavier McZeal, per the Review-Journal.
Spanish Springs opened with 35 and Pinecrest reversed a title game
Northern Nevada spent Saturday at the University of Nevada, Reno, where Mackay Stadium hosted four high school games in a day, per Nevada Sports Net. South Tahoe opened it by beating Wooster 42-13. North Valleys beat Lowry 13-7 in the afternoon.
The one that mattered to the state's pecking order came at one o'clock. Pinecrest Academy Sloan Canyon beat McQueen 28-21, which reverses last season's 4A title game and does it on a neutral field in McQueen's own city. Neither team is on the Nevada board. After Saturday, that is a question rather than an oversight.
The nightcap belonged to the team the board has been waiting on. No. 2 Spanish Springs, the defending 5A champion, opened its season by beating Carson 35-7. Carson came in 1-0. It left having been controlled for four quarters, which is roughly what the Nevada Appeal's headline said about it.
That matters to the shape of the board. Spanish Springs sat at No. 2 all preseason on reputation and a title, without playing a down. It has now played one, and the number holds up.
Bishop Gorman goes to Florida and the north keeps traveling
Next week takes Nevada back out of state again. Bishop Gorman plays Columbus of Miami at the Broward County Classic in south Florida on Aug. 29, a neutral-site game rather than a road trip. Faith Lutheran goes to Valor Christian in Colorado. Churchill County makes it three straight away from Fallon at South Tahoe. Tafuna of American Samoa visits Liberty of Henderson, and St. Mary's of Stockton comes to Reno to play Bishop Manogue, which is a chance for the Miners to get one back against California.
Two weeks in, the Nevada board's story is a top of the state playing a different sport and a middle that keeps getting its answer from somewhere else. Gorman does not even get a soft week after Bosco; Columbus is next. Nobody underneath it gets a week off from being measured either.
