A week after suffering a lopsided loss, the West Eagles produced a blowout win of their own Friday night by shutting out the Chugiak Mustangs 48-0.
West fought and overcame swirling winds early in the game by limiting its passing game to quick, short throws and getting the ball into the hands of junior utility player James “Boogie” Sloan.
Nobody calls Sloan by his first name. He goes by Boogie, the nickname his mother gave him when he was in diapers. Against the visiting Mustangs, he turned in a three-touchdown performance on offense and a strong showing on defense.
“He was electric at times,” West coach Tim Davis said. “I really, really liked that.”
Sloan wears many hats for the Eagles. He plays safety exclusively on defense, but on offense he opened the season as a wide receiver before making the switch to running back this week.
Although he still lined up at receiver on the occasions when West lined up in its empty backfield formation, his positional switch proved to be the right move. He was West’s most explosive and effective runner even on a night when the Eagles went with a committee-approach to their ground game.
“Boogie is a game-changer,” said junior quarterback Benjamin Collins, who threw four touchdown passes. “He can play running back, receiver; he can play a lot of things and that’s good for us because we have a lot of looks we can run with him.”
Sloan boogied his way into the end zone for a pair of rushing scores and scored his third touchdown on a long catch-and-run pass play. He took a perfectly executed wheel route up the right sideline for 75 yards to pay dirt to put the Eagles up 14-0.
His first rushing touchdown, a 9-yard run up the middle, gave West a 21-0 lead. His second was set up by senior Yee Nou’s 50-yard reception that put the Eagles on the 1-yard line; Sloan punched the ball across the goal line on the next play for a 35-0 West lead.
“Coming into the game I had the mentality that we had to win,” Sloan said. “We want to be great, we want to succeed so we came out here and executed and got the job done. … I put everything I had on the field.”
On defense, he logged his first sack of the season on a safety blitz where he came crashing off the right side of the Mustangs offensive line and proceeded to flush Chugiak quarterback Harvey Pullen out of the pocket before landing on him for the takedown.
Sloan wears No. 40, an unorthodox jersey number for a skill-position player who doesn’t play linebacker or fullback. The number holds special significance in the Sloan household.
“It’s from my family. Everybody wears it, so I had to represent,” Sloan said. “My brother’s dad and my dad also wore 40.”
The game represented a big turnaround for the Eagles, who lost 55-7 to East last week.
“The guys grew in a week,” Davis said. “We’ve got a lot more growing to do. A lot more individual growth and team growth, but good things tonight.”
Chugiak showed glimpses of promise and made a few promising drives but West’s defense stood tall when the Mustangs got close to the red zone, and Josh Ralston, their strong-legged kicker, came up just short on a pair of long field goal attempts.
It was the second game in a row the Mustangs were shut out, but coach Ryan Landers is pleased with the amount of fight and resiliency he’s seen from his team during a rough couple of weeks.
“One thing I love about the school that I’m at is that the kids don’t give up,” he said. “They played for each other and they have heart.”
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