For a short time last Thursday night, Fernley High School football coach Anfernee Sloan
allowed himself to look past whatever concerns he might have about his team’s defense, or what
challenges Fallon may present when the teams meet this Friday in the second round of the
Northern 3A playoffs.
For a few minutes at least, Sloan let those thoughts escape while he congratulated his players on
what they accomplished with Thursday’s 50-28 win over Lowry in the first round of the playoffs.
None of the players on this year’s team were in high school yet when Fernley won its last playoff
game, 35-34 in Truckee in 2021.
“I told the kids congratulations for every single one of you, because that’s your guys’ first
playoff win, which is huge,” Sloan said. “It wasn’t pretty by any means, and that’s playoff
football.”
Keeshawn Love ran for 269 yards and four touchdowns, Riley McCullar scored once and Joey
Machado returned an interception for a touchdown to lead the Vaqueros, who trailed twice early
in the game before steamrolling the Buckaroos with their dominating ground game.
In all, the Vaqueros ran for 429 yards. McCullar had 88 yards and one rushing touchdown, an 80-
yarder on Fernley’s first offensive play of the game. Bryce Stephens and Jayden Eparza each
added 26 yards, including a touchdown by Stephens.
The Vaqueros had shut out Lowry 47-0 two weeks earlier in Winnemucca, but this time around,
the Buckaroos found success with a quick passing game. Quarterback Connor Peterson
completed 22 of 41 passes for 193 yards and four touchdowns.
The first of those, a 25-yarder to Ryder Huitt, gave Lowry a 7-0 lead.
After McCullar answered and a two-point conversion put Fernley up 8-7, Peterson led the
Buckaroos down the field and again connected with Huitt for an 8-yard touchdown for a 14-8
Lowry lead with 2:55 left in the first quarter.
But Fernley scored 28 consecutive points to take control of the game. Love scored on a 13-yard
run to give Fernley a 15-14 lead, then Machado read a short pass underneath, stepped in front of
the receiver and returned the interception 25 yards to put Fernley up 22-14. A 61-yard
touchdown run by Love extended the lead to 29-14, and he made it 36-14 with a 68-yard score.
Each team scored twice in the second half, but the outcome was never in doubt after Fernley’s
second quarter avalanche.
Sloan said he wasn’t surprised that Lowry was able to move the ball and put some points on the
board after the Vaqueros shut them out two weeks earlier.
“You know how much harder it is to play a team the second time and beat them the same way
you did the first time?” he asked. “It’s hard, because teams make adjustments. I expected them to
come into this game with a better plan than they did the last time.”
The Vaqueros will be on the other end of that formula this week. They will be the ones making
adjustments from their 42-15 loss to Fallon on Oct. 10, a game that was 21-15 in the third
quarter.
The teams will square off at 7 p.m. this Friday in Fallon.
“I think that’s going to be a really good football game this go-around, because like I said, it’s
harder to beat a team a second time,” Sloan said.
Even while his team was preparing to play Dayton and Lowry the last two weeks, Sloan and his
coaches have been working during that time to try to scheme up a plan to turn around that first
result against Fallon.
“It’s hard to say study, because it wasn’t necessarily schematics, right? We just weren’t doing the
things that we were taught,” he said. “But I could say we’re studying, because we’ve been
looking at this stuff the last two and a half weeks. We’ve got a game plan moving forward and
we’re going to go and do what we got to do to get the job done.”
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