THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: A special run for Lake City’s Archer James

The scoreboard will reflect that Lake City High went scoreless in Saturday’s game vs. Highland in Pocatello. 

Unless you count the touchdown at halftime, scored by Lake City junior Archer James. 

In a special play from the Highland 40-yard line, run after the first half concluded, Archer, a student with special needs and wearing No. 45, took a handoff from Britton Johnston, stiff-armed a defender and raced 40 yards to the end zone. 

After which players from both teams raced to the end zone to congratulate Archer, who is originally from Pocatello. 

“Hats off to Highland,” said Lake City coach Byron Hout, noting many of the Rams players knew Archer from his time living in southeast Idaho. “Class act by Highland.”

Archer is in his second year in the Lake City football program. 

The play is called “Archer run,” and the Timberwolves ran it last year at halftime of junior varsity games. And they plan to do so again this year at JV games. 

This season, with Lake City playing at Highland and many of Archer’s family and friends from Pocatello able to watch in person, coaching staffs from both teams agreed to run the “Archer run” at halftime of Saturday’s varsity game at Iron Horse Stadium. 

“We wanted to make this first one special for him,” Hout said. 

FLIPPING THROUGH the channels late last night (re: early morning), trying to catch up on the local high school football highlights, we stumbled upon the re-air of New Mexico’s 31-10 handling of UCLA on Friday night at the Rose Bowl. 

Normally that wouldn’t be of that much interest, but with former Idaho coach Jason Eck now coach of New Mexico, and a handful of former Vandals now Lobos (including Eck’s linebacker son, Jaxton, as well as quarterback Jack Layne), you’re more likely to tune it for more than just a casual watch. 

Eck gets it, and understands the landscape of college football. So while the “outside world” maybe have looked at the result as a shocker (“lil’” New Mexico beating mighty” UCLA) he was able to put the Lobos’ victory into perspective. 

“We’re gonna play better teams than UCLA,” Eck told the Albuquerque Journal after the game. “I know they’re a Power Four team, but there’s gonna be a lot of teams we play that are better than UCLA. It’s not (like) we beat Ohio State or something, who’s ranked No. 1. We gotta keep getting better and improve on a lot of areas on our team.” 

For reference, the remaining teams on the schedule for New Mexico (2-1) are New Mexico State, San Jose State, Boise State, Nevada, Utah State, UNLV, Colorado State, Air Force and San Diego State. 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.