Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — Editor's note: This story has been corrected from its original version. Tristan Palyo blocked a punt that was returned for a touchdown by David Strait.

If conventional can equate to boring, the Soroco High School football team’s opening game of the season Friday at Springer, N.M., was anything but.

The Rams, postseason eligible in 8-man football this season for the first time, used a late special teams touchdown Friday to come away with a 16-12 win.

“It was a wild game,” Soroco coach David Bruner said.

Soroco trailed, 12-0, after the first quarter, with a pair of early fumbles thwarting two promising drives.

AJ Anderson made a field goal at the end of the first half to bring the score to 12-3.

Nick Paxton hit Michael Rossi for a 30-yard touchdown in the third quarter to cut the lead to 12-10.

This is where it got wild.

After running the clock down to 1 minute, 5 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Spring­er had to punt from its own 10-yard line. Bruner figured the team would set up for a return and go to its hurry-up offense.

“David (Strait) made a comment in the huddle, ‘I’m going to block it and just run it in,’” Bruner said.

It proved prophetic, as Tristan Palyo blocked the punt and Strait ran it in for the score to give Soroco a 16-12 lead. With a minute still left, and Springer having two return guys who had been causing problems all day, the Rams tried an onside kick and recovered the ball.

A couple of kneels later and Soroco was off to a 1-0 start to its season.

“Our defense kept us in the game,” Bruner said. “I sort of figured we’d have games like this where our defense would have to keep us in the game. We did a lot of things well, made a lot of mistakes, but just found a way to get it done again.”

Soroco plays South Park at 7 p.m. Friday at home.