This past Friday evening, the Jackson Broncs played their first in-state game of the season after falling to Teton High School in Driggs, ID in week 0. The Broncs graduated several key players from last season’s state runner up team and lost their head coach to Teton High School during the offseason and expectations were not so lofty for this season’s squad as a result. The team entered the week unranked despite their 2nd place finish a season ago in the 3A, and were lining up with a Douglas squad ranked 3rd in the state across 3A.

Right from the word go, the Broncs were out to make a statement during their home opener, hitting Thomas May in stride for a 60+ yard score on the 2nd play of the game on a perfect post route from May and a dime of a pass from quarterback Owen Janssen to take a 7-0 lead less than a minute into the contest. Douglas would spend the entire remaining game playing catchup while Jackson showed great grit in holding them off despite very little offensive production after the 1st drive.

The Bearcats eventually climbed back to a 14-9 score in the 4th quarter following a poor punt from Jackson giving Douglas a short field which they quickly converted into 6 points before failing on their 2-point conversion and leaving it a 5 point game with about 6 minutes to play. However, a time-consuming and eventually field goal producing drive would give Jackson a 17-9 lead with fewer than 60 seconds remaining for Douglas, who also lacked any timeouts to work with.

This proved to be too much for the Bearcats offense to overcome as several incompletions later and time had run out on the potential miracle comeback. The unranked Jackson Broncs had managed a shocking victory over the highly seeded Douglas Bearcats and it marked the highest seed difference upset of the season so far in any classification.

Jackson will try to use this momentum heading into next week as they take on Wood River which you can catch on SVI 2.