Desert Sun sports reporters preview the Top 100 high school football series
Andrew John and Shad Powers explain the Top 100 high school football series at The Desert Sun office in Palm Springs, Calif., on July 24, 2025.
Head coaches and offensive coordinators and quarterbacks dream of nights like Palm Springs had against Coachella Valley on Friday night.
The Indians had the football nine times and scored nine touchdowns. That’s perfection. The final score was 61-27 as Palm Springs showed its offensive versatility by doing damage almost equally with the run and pass.
Quarterback Bishop Miller V, who threw for three touchdowns and ran for two more, probably described it best in discussing what it’s like when the offense is clicking like Friday night.
“It’s just like heaven to me,” Miller said after the Indians improved to 3-0 on the season. “Scoring like that makes us feel great as a team. We just keep building on that, stacking up points. It’s a great team win. I can throw it to anybody and they’re going to make a play and do the best they can out there. It’s a great feeling.”
The simplest way to showcase the depth and balance of the offense in this one is just to list the nine scores.
- Quarterback Bishop Miller V hits running back Jordan Johnson for a 12-yard TD pass.
- Miller plows in for a 2-yard TD run.
- Miller throws a 14-yard TD pass to Jordan Baggett on a crossing rout.
- Receiver Sean Meza takes a sweep and runs it in for a 6-yard TD.
- Miller hits Meza for a 17-yard score. Nice throw by Miller on the run and Meza had to go low for the sliding grab.
- Jordan Johnson rattles off a 59-yard sprint as he finds a hole in the middle and pops it outside. That one gives the Indians a whopping 40 points at the half.
- Johnson busts in from the 2-yard line on the third play of the second half.
- Miller squeezed in for a 2-yard TD run to give the Indians 54 points.
- And with the reserves in on their ninth possession, freshman QB Devon Session had a 50-yard run down to the 2-yard line, and he scored a 2-yard TD on the next play.
Whew! That’s nine touchdowns, six on the ground, three through the air. Johnson finished with 214 yards rushing. Miller finished with over 250 yards passing and hit seven different receivers in the game.
It was a matchup of two of the Coachella Valley’s longest standing schools, but one that hadn’t happened since 2015. The two teams have now played 29 times with Palm Springs winning 27 of them. You may wonder if 61 points is the most Palm Springs has scored in the head-to-head matchup, but the last time they played on Oct. 5, 2015 was a 70-0 Indians win.
Coachella Valley looked like every bit the Indians’ equal for one quarter in this one. “The Ivans” got off to a great start as quarterback Ivan Garza broke loose for a 54-yard touchdown run for the game’s first score, and then Coachella Valley lead back Ivan Camargo found almost the exact same lane for a 67-yard touchdown moments later.
Garza then had a beautiful 25-yard strike to Fernand Avina and at that point the Arabs led 21-14, but the Indians’ defense made some adjustments, star linebacker Koa Rapolla made a pair of game-changing stops — including snuffing Camargo on a fourth-down run — and the rest of the game was all Indians to the tune of 47-6.
Camargo finished with 190 yards rushing and caught a touchdown pass in the second half as the Arabs offense looks like it will be in good shape moving forward, but the defense is going to need to find some more answers. Though they likely won’t play an offense as dynamic as Palm Springs the rest of the way.
Indians’ coach Darryl Goree was happy with his team’s performance and the 3-0 start which is the team’s first 3-0 start since the 2015 team that went 11-1.
“We’re really staying the course with our offense, a nice balance and that’s big for us,” Goree said. “Defensively, it felt like we couldn’t stop them, but we made some adjustments, and I was happy to see our guys be able to handle changes in the course of the game like that.”
Next up
Palm Springs (3-0) has a quick turnaround as they go on the road to play Colton on Thursday.
Coachella Valley (1-2) will look to regroup on the road at Palo Verde Valley on Friday.
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