JDHS football team growls in return as Crimson Bears, but loses season opener at Service 19-12
- Mark Sabbatini
- Aug 15
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 30
Juneau closes gap with big-play TD in fourth quarter, but then allows Cougars to run out the clock
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
The Crimson Bears showed they can bite back in their namesake return to the gridiron after playing the past five seasons as the Huskies, rallying from a 19-6 fourth-quarter deficit on a 54-yard touchdown run to make the score 19-12 with about six minutes to go. But they couldn’t stop Service High School from literally running out the clock on the Cougars’ home field.
The loss in the opening game of the 2025 season for Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé on Friday in Anchorage came after record flooding of the Mendenhall River kept the team from practicing most of the week, Head Coach Rich Sjoroos said in an interview after the game. The team practices on the field at Thunder Mountain Middle School that borders the river and the school was closed from midday Tuesday through Thursday.
"We've had a kind of a little bit of a scattered week, beginning with the flood," he said. "We kind of had to shut it down this past week and didn't get a lot of practice time in. So that kind of limited our ability to make adjustments and expand the playbook so maybe we'd have a few more options, but we didn't have some of that stuff installed yet. But we'll be all right."
The Crimson Bears’ offense was led by a new quarterback after three players who started at the position during the past two years graduated and Noah Ault — last year’s opening-day starter — switched to wide receiver for his senior year. Daniel Campbell got the start in this season’s opener — the first time he has played the position in a game after winning a pre-season competition with former junior varsity quarterback Krew Ridle — and Sjoroos said Campbell played a solid, turnover-free game.
"I think he took one sack in the game and made good decisions, and so I'm proud of what he did," Sjoroos said.
Ethan Van Kirk took over the primary running back duties due to the graduation of all-state player Jayden Johnson and senior Sam Sarof transferring to Service. Sjoroos said Van Kirk and fullback Jaxin Jim ran well behind an offensive line that is skilled, but thin on reserves at the moment.
"There's a couple guys still working on getting their 10 practices in and once they do that then they'll be able to play in games, and that will give us some extra depth and things like that that we can turn to," Sjoroos said.
The coach said he also was generally pleased with a defensive effort that contained Service much of the game, although the Cougars did connect on long scoring passes that made the difference in the game and were able to make some long runs in the final minutes to preserve their win.
"Things that I thought were maybe even ahead of schedule was our tackling was really good," he said. "I thought we had good communication for a week-one game, I was really impressed with that."
Juneau also committed few penalties, Sjoroos said.
The Crimson Bears scored first and took a 6-0 lead on a second-quarter run by senior running back Mati Iona.
"That was a great drive," Sjoroos said. "It was about a 50- to 60-yard drive, just basically on the ground. We found a couple of things that were working — power game to one side, misdirection to the other — and we just kind of kept going back and forth with that. They had us in a third-and-five at one point, and we got them to jump offsides and got and got a first down there, and then we're able to punch that in as Mati Iona with his first high school touchdown. So that was pretty cool and it was great on the road."
Service came back with the first of three touchdown passes to tie the score at halftime. Another TD pass put Service up 12-6 in the third quarter and the Cougars seemed ready to pull away when a long throw with just over six minutes put them ahead 19-6.
"They’ve got some very speedy receivers, I mean really fast guys, and just something that we'll keep working on —coverage on the back end and things like that," Sjoroos said.
Juneau answered with the long scoring run by Jim on the first play from scrimmage after the kickoff.
"I just thought that was a great answer because at that point they just gone up two scores and kind of felt like that we were finished," Sjoroos said. "And I thought (our) kids, what resiliency to just get that quick score and get back on the board."
But Service dominated the line of scrimmage during the closing minutes, picking up a series of first downs that got them well into Juneau territory until, with less than a minute left and no Crimson Bears timeouts remaining, the Cougars took a knee on the final two snaps.
"Credit to them, they were able to grind out some first downs and run the clock out," Sjoroos said. "But we were right there, and I really felt confident that if we got that ball back that we had a play we had ran earlier in the game, and just missed on our opportunity, and I felt like we were going to hit that one again and get a score on the board. So we just couldn't quite get the ball back."
Juneau and Service were ranked sixth and seventh, respectively, in the Alaska Sports Report/DI Football Preseason Coaches Poll.
JDHS sports teams have long been known as the Crimson Bears, but citywide teams that included players from the now-defunct Thunder Mountain High School — such as football and cheer — became known as the Huskies starting with the 2019-2020 school year. TMHS closed after the 2023-24 school year and students were consolidated at JDHS, but the Huskies name was retained for a final season.
The Crimson Bears are scheduled to play their home opener against Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School at 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 23, at Adair-Kennedy Memorial Field. The Thunderbirds, ranked fouth in the preseason poll, lost their opening game on the road to eighth-ranked Colony High School 42-20.
"East is always big," Sjoroos said. "They've always got those long names that hardly fit on the back of your jersey and they're well-coached. And I'm anxious to see that film. I mean they had, I think, 28 seniors last year, or something like that. So eventually you think at some point that maybe they're not going to just reload like they always do. And so we'll see."
"I'm glad we have them at home and we've always played them well there, and we've been able to get a couple wins over them in recent years in Juneau. And so I'm super excited to have our home opener. I think we're going to just see a super revved-up group of players and fans, and everybody's been circling this on the calendar for a while and we're ready to go."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
