The first postseason Black & Blue Bowl between North Medford and South Medford was still a one-score game late in the third quarter on Saturday evening when the Black Tornado took over at midfield following an Easton Curtis interception.
Ten seconds later, the OSAA / OnPoint Community Credit Union 6A football championship game was effectively over, as senior RB Cameron Nix swept left, executed an acrobatic 360-degree spin to avoid being tackled, and sprinted untouched to the north end zone at fog-shrouded Spiegelberg Stadium in Medford. That made the score 28-13 North Medford, a deficit that run-heavy South Medford could not overcome.
North Medford (9-4) added a chip shot field goal late in the fourth quarter to put the finishing touches on a 31-13 Black Tornado win, which avenged a 33-30 loss to South Medford (8-5) to close the regular season just over four weeks ago. Nix was named Moda Health Player of the Game for North Medford after his 233-yard rushing performance.
“They owned [bragging rights] for a few weeks,” said North Medford head coach Nathan Chin. “They weren’t going to own it for the rest of the year. Our team was determined this week that that was not going to happen. All credit to the kids. They prepped like no other and had an ultimate focus about them.”
In the first year in which the OSAA separated the top 12 6A teams into a 6A Open Division and bracketed the next 16 into a 6A Division (known last year as the “Columbia Cup”), the top two teams, No. 13 South Medford and No. 14 North Medford, played to a 7-7 draw in the first half, in a rock’em, sock’em defensive game that was pure Black & Blue belligerence on both sides. Teagan Neron and Landyn Meeker were everywhere on defense for North Medford, while Jacob Dalton was in on two sacks for South in a half where the teams combined for 195 total yards.
South Medford scored on its opening drive to take a 7-0 lead. It was a 15-play, 73-yard masterpiece that consumed almost nine minutes on the play clock and saw the Panthers convert twice on third down and once on fourth down. Bridger Foss finished the drive with a three-yard run out of the Wildcat formation.
North Medford knotted the score at 7-7 on its second drive. The Black Tornado could not capitalize on a 41-yard run by the shifty Nix to open their first drive, but used 41 rushing yards from Nix the next time they had the ball, capped by his elusive nine-yard run with 8:45 left before halftime. South Medford had a chance to answer North Medford’s score after a long kickoff return from Foss and dead ball penalty set the Panthers up at the North Medford 30. The Panthers gained one first down thanks to a determined Kellen Lefebvre run but got no closer than the 11 before the drive stalled. A 35-yard field goal attempt to take the lead was disrupted by a high snap, causing the kick to fall short.
The rest of the half was a field position battle, with neither team gaining any significant advantage nor posing a scoring threat.
North Medford, which deferred to start the game, got a jolt as the second half began, thanks to a 44-yard kickoff return from Tate Snyder. It took only six plays for the Black Tornado to turn that starting position into points, A Traeger Healey scramble for 12 on third-and-three, and two Nix runs totaling 23 yards set the stage for Healey’s three-yard scoring strike to Negron, which put North up 14-7 with less than four minutes gone in the second half.
“Football is about momentum,” Chin said. “We have a bunch of kids who find a way to shift momentum.”
South Medford answered immediately with momentum-shifting plays of its own in a seven-play, 68-yard drive, which included a six-yard scramble by QB Makana Brown on third-and-five, a 27-yard run out of Wildcat from Foss and a 16 yard fly sweep TD for Lefebvre, who had 28 yards running in the drive. The extra point attempt, however, was blocked, leaving South still trailing with just over four minutes to play in the third.
North Medford added to its lead on the next drive, as the game became more reminiscent of the shootout between the teams on Nov. 1. The four-play drive lasted only 100 seconds, included an 18-yard Nix run, a nice Traeger pass to Nolan Kelly on a drag route and a 21-yard scoring toss to Curtis, the sure-handed receiver who won a jump ball with a Panther defender.
Nix’ stupendous (and spirit-breaking) 50-yard jaunt, less than 90 seconds later, added to the 21-13 North Medford advantage and made it a two-score game. South Medford had the ball three more times, but only got as close as the North Medford 45-yard-line before the clock ran out, thanks to the same kind of hard-nosed defense that frustrated mighty Jesuit the week before.
.North Medford finished with a 2:1 advantage in total yards, led by a running game that piled up 258 yards.
“Both our teams are built on that run game,” Chin noted. “If we get that established, it helps a ton.”
Healey wasn’t asked to throw much, but the junior was effective when he did, going 7-for-8 for 83 yards and two touchdowns. Defensively, the Black Tornado flew to the ball, led by Neron, Meeker, Trey Kennedy-Coleman and Cade Pettersen.
“You play a second time you know what you’re probably going to get,” Chin said. “Credit to them; it took us a while to get rolling. Our kids did a good job of sticking with it and trusting the plan and we were able to finally separate at the end.”
What did it mean for North Medford to finish off the season with a win like this over its fiercest rival?
“It’s a sense of relief right now,” said Kennedy-Coleman. “We worked so hard every single day to get to this moment.”
Foss and Lefebvre combined for 134 yards rushing for South Medford, which represented almost 80 percent of its total offense.
“It was a great high school football game for 2 1/2 quarters at least,” noted veteran Panther head coach Bill Singler, whose team lost to Sunset last year in the Columbia Cup final. “It was a slugfest. They made a few plays there late in the third quarter and early in the fourth that extended the lead. Credit to them. They played well to win the game in the second half. We needed to get some stops in the third quarter and didn’t do it.”
“We’ve had one helluva year,” Sigler added. “To play to the final day two straight years…I’ll take those kind of years any day.”
johnt@osaa.org
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