Heritage Academy Laveen turns corner after string of down years, heads to 2A football playoffs
They have no home football stadium. No locker room. A closet to store equipment. And now they're the talk of the Heritage Academy Laveen campus.
The football team is 8-2, the No. 10 seed in the 2A playoffs that start Friday, and have a chance to win its first ever playoff game when it visits No. 7 Tonopah Valley.
It's already been a season of firsts in the Arizona Interscholastic Association for the tiny school at Baseline Road and 43rd Avenue, between two large Phoenix Union High School District schools, Cesar Chavez and Fairfax in Laveen.
This is the first time the Heroes have won more than two games since breaking off from the Canyon Athletic Association, which oversees competition in small high schools around the state, and joining the Arizona Interscholastic Association more than six years ago.
It's the first time they've made the playoffs. The first season in the AIA that fellow students stopped asking players, "Are you guys going to score any points this week?"
Athletic Director Andrew Saathoff was part of Heritage Laveen's first AIA football coaching staff six years ago when the team went 0-11.
"It was tough," Saathoff said. "We came from the CAA where the competition wasn't nearly what it was (in AIA)."
They went 0-10 in their second season in the AIA. That was followed by 2-8, then 0-8 in the 2020 COVID-impacted year, and, in Anthony Johns' first year as head coach last year, 2-8.
And now this historic season.
"It's the talk of the school right now," Saathoff said. "It hasn't always been that way. I remember when I was on the staff, people would be joking around with, 'Are you going to win this week? Are you going to score any points this week? Now it's, 'How bad are you going to beat them by?' "
When Johns came to the public charter school last year, he started talking to kids, getting them excited to play football.
Most of the students come to Heritage for the academics. Of the three seniors Johns had on his team last year, two of them graduated with their college Associate of Arts' degree. Students take college-credit courses at the school.
"I was coming here for academics," senior receiver/linebacker Nathan Delgado said. "I decided to play sports. I'm glad I came here."
Heritage's success starts at quarterback with Kaleb "Bubba" Burras, a slightly built sophomore, who moved here with his family from Louisiana before he began the seventh grade. He remembers watching practices as a grade schooler, wondering why the players ran so much.
"With this team, we go straight to the plays," Burras said.
Burras, 5-foot-9, 155 pounds, has completed 60% of his passes, throwing for more than 1,000 yards with 11 touchdowns and three interceptions, and has run for 512 yards and eight TDs.
"I feel like if I had gone to Fairfax or Chavez, I wouldn't have had a lot of playing time my freshman and sophomore years," he said. "So I came here."
Burras started as a freshman when he threw for 1,145 yards and 11 TDs but was intercepted eight times. That experience carried over to this year, after ending last season with a 71-0 loss to Phoenix Arizona Lutheran, the eventual 2A champion.
Arizona Lutheran, whose field Heritage mostly uses for its home games, was elevated to 3A by the AIA this year.
Heritage couldn't go any lower than 2A, the smallest 11-man competition, but the Heroes, all 39 strong, took their summer workouts to another level, where it was more expected for the players to be there.
They double their small weight room as the locker room. That sits a few yards from the field on which they practice on campus, where there are no stands, no lights.
"We dont worry about the amenities," Johns said. "We're going to work hard with what we have. We'll make it work."
They had their first signature win two weeks ago, when they stunned unbeaten Camp Verde 47-35, as Burras passed for 195 yards and a touchdown and workhorse senior running back Jonathan Rojo carried the ball 33 times for 179 yards and four TDs.
"It's been a lot of hard work and dedication," Rojo said. "We do what we can to put the work in the weight room and on the field."
This is a comeback story not only for the team but for Jacob Marquez, a senior receiver/defensive back/kicker who has overcome two anterior cruciate ligament tears since 2017, including one last year.
"After how bad we did last year and all the work we put in during the summer, I had a feeling it was going to be great," Marquez said.
Johns said it's satifiying to have the school's first winning season and first playoff appearance, but he believes there can be much more than that.
The unflappable sophomore quarterback agrees.
"We didn't put all of this work into this to be done after the first round," Burras said. "I think we can go deep."
To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at richard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him on Twitter @azc_obert.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Heritage Laveen's historic football season shocking the state
