Butte County’s Keaton Archibald helped lead the Pirates to a second-straight championship game
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The East Idaho Sports team has selected a group of fall sports season award winners — players and teams of the year. The award winners will be announced, one per day, in a continuing series.
ARCO – The high-scoring Butte County offense has to start somewhere and that’s usually in the hands of Keaton Archibald.
The Pirates’ quarterback has helped lead the team to two consecutive state championship game appearances and the team’s first title in 2023.
Archibald, the High Desert Conference Player of the Year, has been a force on both sides of the ball despite a history of bad luck with injuries.
The junior suffered a leg and knee injury in the state semifinal win over Hagerman, but tried to give it a go in the championship game against Kendrick. Coach Sam Thorngren said they were cautious with the game plan and didn’t start Archibald on defense, but he was tackled early in the game and suffered a concussion, Thorngren said.
Kendrick went on to win the championship game 50-14.
“He’s really the glue that holds it all together and makes it work, so that was a pretty big loss,” Thorngren said.
Losing Archibald at quarterback was a blow, but he also orchestrates the defense as a safety.
“He calls the defense when he’s in there so it hurt us both ways,” Thorngren noted.
Even so, the EastIdahoNews.com 8-man Player of the Year proved his worth on a team with high expectations.
Archibald passed for 774 yards and 12 touchdowns and also ran for 700 yards and 11 scores.
He was the man in the middle of the Pirates’ offense that featured a pair of 1,00-yard rushers in Rawson Twitchell and Razor Duke and averaged nearly 55 points in the team’s nine wins.
And did we mention defense?
Archibald had 54 tackles and four interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown.
“He’s just so smart,” Thorngren. “He processes and understands what’s going on. He’s a total team player.”
Thorngren credited Archibald for his poise in last year’s title run after the sophomore was put into the starting lineup midway through the season following an injury to another player.
“Man, he just calmed us down on both sides of the ball,” Thorngren said. “He’s been a fixture and that’s when we turned the corner last year. It allowed all the other pieces to fall into place … He’s a coach on the field.”
Thorngren said Archibald’s offensive stats don’t tell the whole story because he gets everyone else involved.
“In the option he has such good reads,” Thorngren said. “He’s a magician with the ball.”