After shooting most of the Golden and Standley Lake game, grabbing dinner during an injury time out, I returned to NAAC for the Arvada West and Ralston Valley football game under the lights.

In 2000, Ralston Valley, or RV, opened to help alleviate the student to teacher ratio at Arvada West, or AWest.  RV immediately started wining in sports and a rivalry was born.  RV, who has spent most of this season in the top 5 for 5A schools, so a win over RV would be huge for the school and huge for the football team who went into this game at 2-5 for the season.

Right away, you could see that AWest was up for this game.  Unfortunately, as up for the game as AWest might have been, RV was more up for the game.  It appeared that there were more RV fans there than AWest kids, and the football team fed off of that support.

Now, to give AWest credit, they played a great game.  They had some great runs and some great opportunities.  But, RV was running better plays and defense.

At halftime, we had another remembrance of murdered 10 year old, Jessica Ridgeway.  Everyone from the stands came down to the track around the field and joined hands for a moment of silence and a balloon release.

Awest was able to get on the score board in the second half, but RV had already dominated on offense and there was very little AWest could do to stop them.

I do not know if it was shooting soccer or cross country or football every day that week, but I was really struggling with my flash for this game.  I could not get it dialed in the way I wanted, so I had a lot of red eye to fix.

But the action on both sides of the ball was fast and furious, and I did get quite a few nice images for MaxPreps.

But, unfortunately for AWest, the score told another story as RV would go on to a 48-7 win.

To see and purchase more photos from this game, please visit MaxPreps.