Valley beats Sunrise Mountain, makes the playoffs

By Case Keefer (contact)

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011 | 11:16 p.m.

After a one-year hiatus, Valley is back in the playoffs.

Valley defeated Sunrise Mountain 42-13 Thursday night. The Vikings win coupled with Rancho’s loss gave them the No. 4 seed in the Northeast division.

Valley will travel to Liberty in the first round of the playoffs next week.

“It’s a big thing for the program,” said first-year coach Marcus Sherman. “It’s something we talked about all year. We wanted to get into the playoffs and see what we could do to keep the program moving in the right direction.”

There was no celebration as the final seconds ticked off of the scoreboard because Valley wasn’t sure that it was in the postseason. It wasn’t until later that the coaches found out Rancho had lost and the Valley players could rejoice in knowing they had another week of football.

Valley quarterback Anthony Sanders is becoming a handful for opponents. Sanders scored multiple times for the Vikings against the Miners.

After Sunrise Mountain got out to an early lead by scoring on its first drive, Sanders answered by Erik Edmonds on a slant route for a long touchdown. The Vikings opened the game up from there and ran away from the Miners.

“We always get off to a slow start and we did again tonight,” Sherman said. “But we played really well after that.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or case.keefer@lasvegassun.com. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.