Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Staff photo: Kevin Wilson Clovis senior receiver Christian Caldwell applies a stiffarm to Mayfield defensive back Robert Zarate in the third quarter of Friday's game. Caldwell caught four passes for 32 yards in Clovis' 35-21 defeat.
LAS CRUCES — The Field of Dreams became a first-half nightmare for the Clovis Wildcats, and a second-half comeback wasn’t enough to halt second-seeded Mayfield.
link Staff photo: Kevin Wilson
Clovis senior receiver Christian Caldwell applies a stiffarm to Mayfield defensive back Robert Zarate in the third quarter of Friday's game. Caldwell caught four passes for 32 yards in Clovis' 35-21 defeat.
The Trojans scored on five of their first six possessions behind a complete game from quarterback Kavika Johnson en route to a 35-21 victory in a Class 6A semifinal Friday night.
Mayfield (10-1), winners of six straight, will take on third-seeded La Ceuva, a 28-14 winner over Onate. Clovis finished 6-6 for the fourth consecutive season, and had its fifth consecutive season end in the quarterfinal round.
Johnson was 17-of-20 passing for 236 yards and a touchdown, and ran 13 times for 33 yards and three more scores as the Trojans rolled up 347 yards of offense and scored the game’s first 28 points.
“He’s a Division-I athlete,” Clovis coach Eric Roanhaus said of the 6-foot-2, 195-pound Johnson. “I don’t know where they’ll play him, but he’s a Division-I athlete. The thing with the good athletes is they can take a bad play and turn it into a good play. He did that on a regular basis.”
Johnson scored on runs of 2, 13, and 7 yards, and completed passes to seven receivers.
“He did a good job,” Mayfield coach Michael Bradley said. “He threw to a lot of guys. They’ve been doing better together every week.”
Payson Rogers carried 11 times for 67 yards, including a 35-yard touchdown run to cap a 21-point first quarter.
The Trojans took a 28-0 lead with 7:05 left in the second quarter as Johnson found Ethan Alvarado for a 27-yard score.
But Mayfield still had to sweat out a second-half charge from Clovis, which had its best aerial game of the season powered by juniors Daulton Hatley, Roland Chavez and Tucker Dobbs. Chavez caught four passes for 79 yards, including all of Clovis’ scores on catches of 5, 8 and 10 yards, while Dobbs caught three passes for 63 yards, including a 47-yarder on a drive that died just outside the red zone.
“Daulton did a good job tonight,” Roanhaus said of the junior’s 214-yard passing night. “Roland did a good job catching the ball tonight. Dautlon did a good job, made the throws he needed to make and made some good decisions when the protection broke down.”
Clovis got a pair of pass interference calls on a drive late in the fourth quarter to set up a first-and-goal with four minutes left, but a trio of passes fell incomplete and the Trojans ran out the clock.
“We (started slow) the last four games,” Roanhaus said. “We had bad first halves against Carsbad, Hobbs and Sandia. We dug ourselves a hole tonight, and we couldn’t get out of it.
“We squandered two opportunities in the first half, we squandered two opportunities in the second half. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.”
In Class 6A’s other Friday night quarterfinal, top-seeded Rio Rancho defeated Las Cruces 41-23 and will face the winner of Saturday’s quarterfinal between No. 4 Eldorado and 12th-seeded Cibola.
