OAK CREEK — Thunder clapped as the Soroco and Hayden Valley high school football captains met at the middle of the field ahead of their football game Friday night in Oak Creek.

The boom was followed by a roar from the homecoming crowd, but unfortunately, it was preceded by lightning. Soroco Athletic Director Jo Parker said the game was going into a lightning delay and sent players to the bus and locker room and fans to their cars.

There they waited for 90 minutes. At 8:30 p.m., Soroco kicked off.

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Hayden dominated start to finish, winning 48-0 at the final whistle at 10:25 p.m.

“We planned it all week,” Hayden junior Kodi Ingols said. “We worked for it, and it came out how we wanted it to.”

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Junior quarterback Brayden Dale scored the first four touchdowns for the Tigers, all with a similar play. He elected to keep the ball, moved forward then kicked out to the side, usually the left, broke free of the crowd and scored. With 1:10 left in the half, his efforts and two conversions from junior Sabyn Hager made it 28-0 Tigers.

Dale isn’t sure why it worked so well every time. Ingols said Dale is just that athletic and makes it look easy.

Soroco head coach Johnny DeCosta isn’t sure why his team couldn’t stop it every time.

“That’s going to be some film study to really figure it out,” DeCosta said. “We had some guys get trapped inside, and they just kept getting trapped inside. They saw that, took advantage.”

Hayden got the ball back once more before the half concluded, but there wasn’t much time left. With one second on the clock, Dale threw a 29-yard bomb to Hager who trotted into the endzone. As the teams went to the locker rooms, Hayden led 34-0.

The second half didn’t start any better for the Rams. Hayden earned possession after the kickoff since a Ram touched the ball but didn’t hold on to it. Three plays later, Kodi Ingols caught a 29-yard pass from Dale for a touchdown just 1:03 into the quarter. Dale ran in the 2-point conversion. The running clock commenced.

“We worked together well, big plays happened,” Ingols said. “Just everyone did their part.”

The Tigers scored again before the night ended off a 15-yard pass to Chase Preston in the opening seconds of the fourth quarter.

Soroco hardly made any offensive progress, although the team did improve as the game went on. The Rams hurt themselves more than Hayden’s defense did.

“The fumbles and the turnovers,” DeCosta said. “Every time we would get a little bit of momentum going, something would happen and we’d give it back to them. Turnovers kills momentum.”

Hayden gathered in the far endzone after high-fiving their opponent at the end of the game. Following a short discussion, the Tigers stood and cheered, “Beat Vail Christian.”

Already, the boys in orange and black are excited for next week when they take on the 4-0 Saints.

“We’re in the same tier as them, so we got to go show them what we can do,” Ingols said.

“Just play our hardest out there and let the game happen,” Dale said.

Hayden 48, Soroco 0

H 14 20 8 6 – 48

S 0 0 0 0 – 0

First quarter

H – Brayden Dale 20 rush, Sabyn Hager rush, 7:01

H – Dale 10 rush, conversion no good, 4:02

Second quarter

H – Dale 30 rush, conversion no good, 10:56

H – Dale 30 rush, Hager rush, 1:10

H – Hager 29 pass from Dale, conversion no good, 0:00

Third quarter

H – Kodi Ingols 29 pass from Dale, Dale rush, 10:57

Fourth quarter

H – Chase Preston 15 pass from Dale, conversion no good, 11:50

Shelby Reardon is the assistant editor at the Steamboat Pilot & Today. To reach her, call 970-871-4253, email sreardon@SteamboatPilot.com or follow her on Twitter @ByShelbyReardon.