Blackfoot holds off Shelley 8-7 in a grind-it-out Week 0 slog-fest

SHELLEY – The 5A High Country Conference season is officially underway as Blackfoot and Shelley kicked off Friday night.

It wasn’t pretty.

Maybe that was due to first-game jitters, or the high temps that sent several players to the ground with leg cramps.

But maybe that’s the kind of grind-it-out style the two teams prefer to play.

At the end, it was Blackfoot celebrating an 8-7 victory, the Broncos’ 1-yard touchdown run by Briggs Esplin and subsequent 2-point conversion run by Mason Taylor with 28 seconds left in the first half proved to be the difference.

“This is the first time I’ve played a Week 0 game as a coach,” Blackfoot coach Josh Stewart said. “That was a challenge … We thought going in that this could be a game like this. Low scoring, kind of a slog. We were hopeful to score a few more times, unfortunately some of our mistakes prevented that. We figured it would be a tough physical fight, just like it was.”

As the game wore on, it looked like whoever came up with a big play might end up with the win.

Shelley did its part as Kyrev Hawker burst around the right side and sprinted through the Bronco defense for an 85-yard touchdown early in the second quarter.

The lead lasted until the final minute of the quarter as Blackfoot put together its own scoring drive and then added the successful 2-point conversion.

That held up through the second half as neither team really threatened to score as both defenses held.

“That’s what were trying to do,” Shelley coach Mike Messick said of the grind-it-out approach. “We give up a lot of size to Blackfoot so we wanted to be physical and aggressive toward them and control the clock … I can’t question the heart of those kids. They played their guts out.”

Not only was it a Week 0 game, but it was also an important conference game. With the addition of Pocatello and Century to the High Country Conference, the now eight-team conference will be fighting for postseason positioning and rankings every Friday night.

Blackfoot (1-0, 1-0) hosts Century next week, while Shelley (0-1, 0-1) is at Idaho Falls.