West Side dynasty makes it 5 titles in 6 years with stomping of Hornets

POCATELLO — When West Side and Declo met during the regular season, on Sept. 27, the Hornets came away 6-0 winners.

As running back Crew Sage explained after Friday night’s 3A State Championship game, the Pirate defense was solid — it allowed just six points. Offensively, the second time around, West Side came in with an improved offensively gameplan, the senior added.

The end result was a 27-6 West Side victory, giving the Pirates their fifth state title in six years.

A big part of that improved gameplan was a healthy Sage, who was sidelined for the first meeting with a concussion.

The senior, and elder of a brotherhood backfield with sophomore Drake Sage, finished the game with 118 yards and two touchdowns on 20 carries. Drake added six carries for 85 yards and one score, along with one catch for nine yards.

Crew said that it has eased the blow of ending a successful high school career, splitting carries with his younger brother. And putting the finishing touches on that career with his second championship in which he and Drake each scored was all the more sweet.

“This year, it’s been hard, being my senior year and everything.,” he said. “Playing with him, I don’t know, it’s the best feeling ever to be right next to your brother on the field, both scoring touchdowns, doing handshakes. It’s pretty sweet.”

The competition began before the opening kickoff.

As West Side came onto the field for opening intros, they sprinted from the endzone toward midfield waving their Jolly Rogers. Rather than stop before crashing into Declo, who was waiting for them at the 50, the Pirates collided with the front row of Hornets, and the two teams had to be separated by the officials.

Sage said Declo did the same thing when the two teams met in September.

The Hornets, he said, stood just over the 50-yard line and refused to give West Side its half of the midfield logo. This time, the senior said, his team wasn’t letting that slide.

“Before the game, we’re like, ‘we’re not letting them stop us at the 50-yard line, if they’re standing there, we’re going into them,'” Crew said.

The actual game got off to a slow start, with the two teams exchanging punts.

Declo got the ball on their own 16-yard line with 4:49 remaining in the second quarter.

Over the next 10 minutes and 33 seconds, the Hornets ran 16 plays, including a fourth-down conversion getting Declo to the West Side 8-yard line. But a delay of game penalty followed by a sack set up a fourth and long at the 20, and a missed field goal.

West Side’s defense, which bent but did not break, gave the ball back to its defense in what was still a scoreless tie.

Crew called the exchange of momentum “ginormous.” As an ironman player — meaning he plays both sides of the ball — like several of Declo’s players, he acknowledged how difficult it is to put together such a methodical drive with it bearing no fruit.

“You get really defeated,” he said.

The Pirate offense responded with a long drive of their own, ending in the opposite endzone and a 7-0 West Side lead.

Crew, the workhorse, took four carries on the drive, but was used just as much as a decoy. Instead, it was quarterback Jaden Fuller who finished the drive, faking a handoff to the elder Sage and finding a wide open Brysen McDaniel in the endzone.

The two possessions spanned more than 15 minutes, and nearly the entirety of the second quarter. Declo put together an efficient two-minute drive but ran out of time as Gavin Rasmussen hauled in a Hayden Thaxton pass at the West Side 11.

West Side began to break things open in the second half.

First it was Drake, who took an inside handoff around the right edge and sprinted 64 yards untouched for the score. He was un-contained because the Declo defense blitzed Crew on the fake pitch after Fuller had already given the younger Sage the ball.

West Side forced another Declo punt on its first possession of the second half, and the offense put together another effective drive. But this one came to an end when Declo three-way star Rasmussen picked off a Fuller pass in the endzone.

But the Pirates got the ball right back, recovering a Hornet fumble three plays later.

On the second attempt in the redzone, West Side punched it in on a one-yard touchdown run from Crew.

Rasmussen returned the ensuing kickoff 90 yards for what would be Declo’s only score of the game.

The senior and three-year starter finished the game with one interception, one kick return touchdown, six catches for 67 yards and three rushes for 29 yards.

Not to be outdone by the by the opposing team’s star, Crew broke an inside run 58 yards for a touchdown two West Side possessions later.

For the final 20 yards of the TD run, Crew was all alone. He admitted after the game that he wasn’t thinking about Rasmussen, or Declo for that matter, he realized the run pushed his rushing total past his little brother’s.

Along with laughing about his production being greater than Drake’s, Crew spoke about the West Side-Declo rivalry, which he was well aware of before he ever stepped on the West Side campus.

He has missed the last two regular season meetings between the two, but, as he pointed out, his team has won when it counted.

“We’ve beat them in the championship twice, that feels good,” Crew said.

Asked what has made the West Side so dominant, Crew said the program has built a culture of success behind great coaching.

As he walked off the field, having already posed with the 3A championship banner, Crew held the game ball tight to his body — as though he was trying not to be stripped of possession.

He said he plans to to sign the ball, then put it in a glass case for display — “I’m keeping it forever.”

As for whether he believes the Pirates can continue their recent run of championship success, Crew believes it falls on Drake, Fuller and the other starter who will return — but he’s confident the Pirates will be right back in the running next season.

“I sure hope so,” he said. “Hopefully my brother can take off, and the rest of the team … we got a couple other juniors, hopefully they can keep it rolling.”