Burns defeated Vale 42-16 to win its second state football championship and first since 2014.

Burns quarterback Jack Wright and the rest of the Hilanders left little doubt about who the best 3A football team in the state was on Saturday.

Wright had four touchdown runs and threw for two more scores to pace the No. 11 Hilanders to a 42-16 victory over the fourth-seeded Vale Vikings in the OSAA/OnPoint Community Credit Union 3A final at Summit High School in Bend.

Burns combined a big-play passing attack with a hard-hitting defense that forced five Vale turnovers, helping the Hilanders (11-2) to their second state championship and first since 2014. They avenged an 18-12 overtime loss at Vale in a Special District 6 game Oct. 4.

The win also capped an improbable playoff run for the Hilanders, who knocked off No. 6 Cottage Grove, No. 3 Santiam Christian, and No. 2 Banks before finally taking down the previously undefeated Vikings.

“We’re all super excited,” Burns coach Matt Bruck said. “It’s fantastic. We’re all just ecstatic. From the coaching staff to the players … it just feels great.

“Our kids just had to step up and come together as a team. They had to trust each other and know that no matter what, they just had to keep fighting and keep believing in each other. Even if Vale was moving the ball or Vale was scoring, we just had to believe in ourselves and keep moving forward.”

The Vikings (12-1) stumbled early and never bounced back after falling behind 22-0 midway through the second quarter.

"Burns has a pretty dynamic passing game,” Vale coach Jeff Aldred said. “We struggled getting the pass rush that we’ve been getting all year long and they had some huge plays that we had a hard time recovering from. 

“We knew that we had to be almost perfect offensively. But when we turned the ball over like we did and had some other negative plays, it was like that typical kind of quicksand game where the harder you tried, the worse it got."

Burns scored on four of its first six possessions and went into halftime with a 28-16 lead. At that point, the Hilanders had four yards rushing on six carries, but Wright had completed 8 of 13 passes for 277 yards with touchdown passes of 72 yards to Canon Winn and 77 yards to Coltin Miller.

One of the early turning points came during Burns’ second possession or game. Facing a third-and-12 situation at the Vale 34-yard line, Wright completed a 32-yard pass to Easton Kemper, setting up the Hilanders with a first down at Vikings’ 2.

Wright ran it into the end zone on the next play and Jaxon Hoyt tacked on a two-point conversion to make it 8-0, but it was the third-down pass to Kemper that exposed a potential chink in Vale’s defensive armor and gave the Hilanders confidence that there were more big plays to be made through the air.

The next big play was a 72-yard touchdown strike to Winn, who got behind the Vikings’ secondary and ran under a picture-perfect throw from Wright. Wright then connected with Miller on a two-point conversion to make it 16-0. 

Next, Wright flipped a screen pass to Hoyt that went for 40 yards to the Vale 2. Wright scored on the next play, pushing the lead to 22-0.

After Vale went on a 10-play, 70-yard touchdown drive to momentarily stop the bleeding, Wright threw a 77-yard bomb to Miller, extending the lead to 28-8 with 4:15 to play in the first half.

At that point, each team had had the ball six times. Burns’ drives ended with a punt, a touchdown, a punt, and then touchdown, touchdown, and touchdown. Vale’s drives ended with a fumble, a punt, an interception, a punt, a fumble, and a touchdown.

“We knew going into the game that Vale’s run defense was very, very tough and we were going to have a hard time moving the ball with our run game,” said Bruck, who was reminded of what happened in the overtime loss at Vale. “That was our lowest production on the rushing game all year. And that’s a tribute to how well Vale played defensively against the run.

“So, we knew if we were going to be able to make plays, it was going to have to be by spreading the ball around through the air. And that meant we might not necessarily have a running game, or our running game was going to have come from short passes and spreading the ball around and getting the ball into people’s hands in space.”

Trailing 22-0, the Vikings turned to their “diesel package” — a run-oriented, formation with a four-man backfield that featured Jake DeVos, Thomas Rodriguez, Kase Schaffeld, and Rocco Shaffer. More often than not, Schaffeld, Vale’s 6-foot-190-pound leading rusher, would take a direct snap and run behind the other three blocking backs.

There also were instances when Schaffeld needed a breather and Landon Haberman stepped in and became the lead back taking the direct snaps.

The strategy paid dividends twice as Valle went on a 10-play, 70-yard scoring drive, followed by an 11-play, 60-yard scoring drive. Schaffeld capped the first drive with a four-yard touchdown run, and then added a five-yard scoring run at the end of the second drive that made the score 28-16 with 31 seconds left in the half.

“I was just trying to get some momentum up front,” Alfred said. “All year long, we get in that package and we get a really good effort from the offensive line. We knew we had some good match-ups in the interior. But at that point, we were just trying to create a little bit of an attitude in that situation and get things moving a little bit easier.”

But the edge the Vikings found late in the first half didn’t carry over to the second half when their first five drives ended with an interception, a turnover on downs in Vale territory, a turnover on downs in Burns territory, a punt, and another interception.

Credit the Burns defense and a few tweaks that Hilander defensive coordinator Jake Blackburn installed at halftime.

“Our defense has been great all year long, but they came out and they played lights out tonight,” Bruck said. “Our defense was flying around all over the place, making stops, creating turnovers, and that was huge. 

“And it was huge not only for our defense in terms of them being able to build confidence in themselves, but it was huge for our team overall morale-wise to help us keep moving forward and being able to say to ourselves, ‘Yeah, yeah, we got this.’”

Burns padded its lead in the second half when Wright scored on a one-yard run that made it 34-16 and another one-yard run followed by a Kemper two-point conversion run that made it 42-16.

Wright, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound junior quarterback, completed 11 of 21 passes for 340 yards and two touchdowns. He also had a team-high 12 carries for 33 yards with touchdown runs of 2, 1, 1, and 1 yards.

“Jack played fantastic,” Bruck said. “He’s played very, very well all season, but I thought he took control of that game and we had a lot of people step up around him to get open and make plays.

“From what we saw, Vale was trying to shut down Coltin Miller and Easton Kemper in the passing game, which opened up a couple of other things for Canon Winn and a couple of other guys. I felt that Jack did a great job of commanding the field today along with having people step up around him and make plays.

“We made a mistake here and there, but overall I could not be more proud of Jack and the game we played.”

On defense, junior lineman Joe Weil had a game-high 13 tackles with six solo stops and one tack for loss, and senior lineman Jayce Wright added 10 tackles with 3.5 tackles for loss, one sack, and a forced fumble. Jasper Skunkcap and Kemper each recovered a fumble, and Preston Hill, Winn, and Wright were each credited with an interception.

For Vale, Schaffeld rushed for a game-high 206 yards on 43 carries with two touchdowns, and Haberman added 25 yards on nine carries.

“Only one team is happy at the end of every year,” Aldred said. “But we had a special group of seniors that have been around the block and played in a lot of big games. To have the outcome that we had is pretty hard to swallow, but we have a great program with a great tradition and it won’t be long until we’re back in that situation again.”

The Vikings had 14 seniors who suited up for the final time Saturday.

“A lot of guys have been playing a lot of football together since they were little guys,” Aldred said. “They set great examples for the younger guys and they showed them what it takes to get to this point. In Vale, we don’t necessarily rebuild. I think we’ll reload just fine and we have a lot of young players who are looking forward to putting their stamp on things.”