At first, Dane Beorchia never responded to the most important text he would receive all fall. It was from one of his Highland receivers, junior Rhidge Barela, who had seen a play he liked on TikTok: A fake screen, where one receiver sold a fake block, then took off upfield, where the quarterback passed to him before the cornerback could recover. So he sent the link to Beorchia, the team’s offensive coordinator.

No response.

“I was like, do you wanna run it or not?” Barela laughed.

Eventually, Beorchia didn’t just respond. He installed it in the Rams’ playbook, and coaches and players worked together to weave their language into the play, that way they could unsheath it when the right time came. It arrived at 9:26 p.m. on Oct. 7, which is when the Rams faced the following situation: Down seven late in the fourth quarter to Rigby, a critical district game and a rematch of last season’s state championship game, and facing third-and-long at the Trojans’ 25, the Rams needed to run their best play.

That’s when everyone in the red and black laundry thanked their lucky stars for TikTok. Highland quarterback Drew Hymas took a shotgun snap, faked a handoff, rolled out to buy time as Barela sold the block and streaked upfield, and right as the throw looked late — “I thought it was gonna be short, honestly,” Barela said — the ball sailed inches over Rigby defenders’ fingertips and into the hands of Barela, who fell backward into the end zone.

“It was a perfect ball,” Barela said.

Only more chaos ensued. Highland coach Nick Sorrell had decided if his team scored a touchdown on that series, the Rams would go for two and the win. Hymas was supposed to throw a slant over the middle to Barela, who lined up on the wrong side of the field, but a Rigby cornerback had that route walled off, so Barela turned to the outside, where Hymas lasered a pass into his chest — the final bullet in the Rams’ upset win over the Trojans, the last piece in a puzzle that looked scattered for so long.

“I feel like we got so much momentum from that,” Barela said.

“That was a lot of fun,” Sorrell said after the game.

As the Rams look back on this regular season and prepare for the 5A playoffs, which they’ll kick off 5:30 p.m. Friday night against Mountain View at Holt Arena, they see their win over the Trojans as something like validation. Few predicted that outcome, not when Highland changed head coaches for the first time in more than two decades, not when the club opened the new era with two straight losses. So much about this Rams season is different, from coaches to players to playing venue, but here they are, with a first-round bye in the state playoffs, winners of four straight, district champions, perhaps the hottest team in the state with the mountaintop in sight, a height so lofty it looked like Mt. Everest not two months ago.

It begs the question: How on earth did they scale it?

“Growth,” Beorchia says.

***

Highland didn’t exactly greet Sorrell with a multitude of experienced players. On offense, the Rams returned just one starter. On defense, they returned five. Lots of kids graduated. Others transferred. Whatever the reason, the reality remained: Highland wasn’t just starting the season with a new head coach. It was starting with almost an entirely new team, too.

On the field, that showed up in spades. The Rams looked discombobulated in their season-opener, a 42-7 setback to Utah’s Lehi — but that’s a powerhouse program, so some were willing to dismiss it. Highland earned little of that sympathy a week later when it dropped a 29-21 decision to Skyline, an Idaho 4A program, though a defending state champion.

For the first time in six years, the Rams had started the season with two losses, and here is where their impossibly high standards began to kick in for all the wrong reasons: Under the hood, they were dealing with inexperienced players who didn’t understand varsity football speed. But a program with 11 state championships does not enjoy the luxury of forgiving fans.

So the Rams heard about it.

“People were praying on our downfall,” Barela said.

“I heard from kids at the school,” Hymas said, “like, you guys aren’t as good this year, what’s going on?”

“I was looking at all these articles. I was like, oh, gosh, it’s not looking good for us this year,” said Kai Callen, a sophomore defensive back/receiver combo. “I was like, we just lost to a 4A team. This is not looking like it’s gonna be Highland’s year.”

Highland athletic director Travis Bell heard from boosters who were concerned about the program’s trajectory. Players felt doubted by their classmates watching from the stands. But no man felt the pressure more than Sorrell, who was in charge of replacing Gino Mariani, the program’s all-time winningest coach, the winner of four state championships, an icon in the Idaho high school coaching orbit.

Sorrell had served as Mariani’s defensive coordinator for the past six seasons, but in his seventh at the varsity level, he assumed a task of gargantuan proportions. After Mariani resigned over the summer, the Rams interviewed Sorrell like they did a host of other candidates, conducting a proper job search — but the truth is their administration always saw Sorrell as Mariani’s successor. He felt the stress acutely.

So when Highland slogged through a winless first two weeks of the season, Sorrell was the first to hear about it. “We’re in a small enough town that people talk,” Sorrell said. The chatter felt personal. What’s going on at Highland? Is this new coach the right fit? Do they need Gino back? It may have relented a tad after the Rams evened their record with wins in their next two games, victories over 4A clubs Century and Pocatello, but it crescendoed at a strange time: On Sept. 23, when Highland lost a one-score game to Meridian, by almost all accounts the best team in the state.

In that game, the Rams’ defense limited the Warriors to just 14 points, one off their fewest of the season. “We stopped the run,” Callen said, “and we didn’t let them pass very much.” Highland came one play away from potentially tying the game, watching a fourth-down play at the goal line go awry in crunch time, but the visitors left with bigger issues: Late in the game, Callen went down with what trainers thought was a ruptured spleen, a potentially life-threatening injury. He was carted off in an ambulance. Turns out, Callen had only suffered a concussion, a sigh of relief to his teammates and coaches.

Problem was: Callen’s injury was only the latest in what felt like a million for Highland. In the Rams’ win over Pocatello, they lost star running back Jackson Riddle, who rebroke his collarbone. In the same game, they had to pull Barela, who took a vicious hit, which resulted in a concussion that kept him out of the Meridian game. Starting safety Campbell Thomas, a returning starter at the position, suffered a broken collarbone ahead of his team’s regular-season finale, a romp over Thunder Ridge. Another defensive back, junior Kannon Kunz, returned from a fractured hand in time to break his leg.

As the season approached its halfway point, Sorrell lamented the injuries, which numbered more than he had ever seen — and never more to this many impact players. Little did he know more were on the way. “It’s tough,” Sorrell said, “especially when you’re one of the lowest in terms of enrollment in the 5A division, and you go against teams that have 2,300 kids. They have a few more kids they can choose from if they have injuries. I know Mountain View is going through the same thing that we are — but they have 700 more kids to choose from.”

In a weird way, though, the Rams began to build momentum when their injuries stacked the highest. They regretted falling short against Meridian, and they understood the way their 2-3 record looked on their ledger, but they toed the tightrope and pulled off a balancing act a thousand feet in the air: They felt disappointed in the loss, but they had kept things competitive against the class of the state, doing so without two of their best players. Their offensive line, which returned just one starter in senior Peyton Harding, showed improvements both in run blocking and pass protection. Their offense took advantage, at least to some degree.

“I mean, we only scored six points,” Hymas said, “but we kinda got the offense going. Longer drives, not as many three-and-outs, getting down close to the goal line, and starting to execute a little bit better there.”

The reality is that Highland diagrammed this on purpose. The Rams never planned on losing so often, particularly because they understood the standards they hold themselves to, but they set up this schedule — the strongest in Idaho, per MaxPreps — because they figured it would serve them well when November rolled around. “We’re scheduling tough teams because good competition is gonna make you better in the long run,” Bell said. “That’s just how Highland has always been.”

That’s far from a revolutionary approach, especially not for programs with rich tradition like the Rams’, but because this year’s squad returned so little experience and it became clear they had growing to do, they took solace in knowing they were making progress, that they kept things intact: They may have lost, but if you looked a little closer, you saw a heartbeat, a sign the Highland of new could yet become the Highland of old.

“After that Meridian game, I was pretty excited about what we could do,” Callen said, “because we could play with the big dogs, 5A-5A football. So that was really when it came together.”

***

Meanwhile, Highland’s old head coach found time for things he never did in 20 years. Mariani still teaches at the high school, leading a science fiction literature class where students read books like Hunger Games and Maze Runner and watch the movies, but now he could do other things. While the Rams tried to figure things out after a winless start, Mariani read the books he purchased over the years. While Sorrell pored over film, Mariani revamped his home. “I never paid attention to my house,” Mariani laughed. “So we re-carpeted and did new flooring and painted.”

What Mariani hasn’t done is attend Highland games. When the Rams’ games are streamed online, he rarely tunes in. “I’ve kinda divorced myself from the athletics there,” Mariani said, “and that’s where it’s at.” He misses coaching, he says, and he isn’t done doing it. It just won’t be at Highland. When he turned in his letter of resignation during the summer, a move he said was simmering for the past couple years, he explained he felt frustrated with the school’s administration. “One valuable lesson I learned,” Mariani said then, “is that if communication is below you, then leadership is beyond you as a supervisor.”

In his wake, the stars all but aligned for Highland in a Sept. 30 win over Blackfoot. Hymas completed 9 of 16 passes for 99 yards, but he wrought most of his damage on the ground, carrying 13 times for 141 yards, including a 60-yard score where he darted through the first and second levels of the defense, a blur of red and black prancing into the end zone like a gazelle.

The Rams didn’t have Callen, who was out with a concussion, and they didn’t have Riddle, their running back — but that’s part of what made the win so gratifying for the hosts. The scoreboard may suggest a close game, but the consensus around the team is that, across the Blackfoot and Rigby wins, they began to feel like they were back.

The Rams got meaningful improvement from their offensive line — Harding, Dallas Call, Bruce Galo, Michael Bang and Dillon Shaw credit O-line coach Bryce Metcalf for their development, plus Cafe Rio and El Herradero tacos, Harding said with a grin — but the most important development came from the most important position on the field.

For the first five weeks of the season, Hymas felt more comfortable as a pocket passer, reluctant to utilize his scrambling and running abilities. He felt more comfortable running out of bounds or throwing the ball away when he felt pressure. “He had that deer in the headlights look,” Beorchia said.

Then something happened in Highland’s win over Blackfoot. “You could see the change happen,” Beorchia said. Hymas didn’t just look comfortable as a passer. He looked electric as a runner. He seldom hesitated to scramble. Coaches drew up designed quarterback draws. Their backup running back was Mason Fullmer, but he’s a better linebacker, and coaches didn’t want to tire him out — so they leaned on Hymas, who made them all look like geniuses. “I don’t know,” Hymas said, trying to explain why he felt more comfortable on the field. “Something clicked, I guess.”

But Hymas’ most meaningful development had little to do with his legs — and even less to do with his arm. During moments when the Rams faced dire straits, like when they were staring down the barrel of a three-score deficit against Rigby, Hymas would walk by Sorrell, slap him on the behind and whisper something reassuring, something to the effect of, “Hey, don’t worry. We got this.”

“And I go, all right. That matters,” Sorrell said. “So it's one of those calming effects that, for everybody here involved — we're in this thing together.”

The rest of the Rams just kept improving in their own rights. Barela emerged as the team’s best receiver. Callen, who holds an Idaho State offer, conditioned himself well enough to play defensive back and receiver. Fullmer excelled as a power back. Defensive linemen like Freddie Williams and Eli Anderton made a habit of wrecking backfields. Highland’s linebacker corps, its most experienced position group with Fullmer, Gunner Wilhelm and Colton George, made key tackles. And on they went.

Mariani still keeps in touch with Sorrell, but because they had worked together for so long, the new head coach doesn’t feel the need to ask the old one for advice on strategy. Instead, Sorrell has asked Mariani for suggestions on the behind-the-scenes work assigned to head coaches: Fundraising. Organization. Time management. In other words: There isn’t much Mariani knows about football that he hadn’t already passed on to Sorrell.

Two months ago, critics may have thought otherwise. Turns out, that’s the thing with Highland. Personnel around the Rams’ program may change. Results rarely do.

***

Afternoon has just turned to evening on Wednesday and the Rams’ third practice of the week is in full swing. Near midfield at Holt Arena, where Highland will play home playoff games this season, Sorrell sidesteps a horde of players, who race downfield in a punt coverage drill. “Just be agile,” he says, explaining how to stay out of the way. In one corner of the turf, Hymas flings passes to receivers along the sideline. In another, Metcalf wrangles a group of sleds for his offensive linemen to practice on. It’s easy for things to feel quiet here, especially when this 12,000-seat dome’s chairs are empty, but players and coaches fill the air with lively chatter — some not suitable for a newspaper story.

Moments later, off to the side, Sorrell considers a question: Do you feel like you’ve proven people wrong? For so much of this season, he and the Rams felt fired up by the whispers, the noise, the people writing off their team. So they chased a 2-3 start with four straight victories, capturing a district championship, a first-round state playoff bye, the right to host playoff games.

So is that enough? Does he feel he’s done enough to silence the doubters?

“I don’t know. That’s a tough question,” Sorrell says. “I mean, when we started this whole thing, we had one goal in mind, and that’s in three weeks. And so is this success (enough)? Are we district champions for the first time in three years? Yes. Did we get that monkey off our back? Yes. But we still have unfinished business that we gotta take care of.”

Welcome to the difficulty of steering the Highland ship. The Rams have accomplished so much of what Sorrell envisioned when he took over five months ago, and they feel proud of their work, of the way these new coaches and players have dovetailed. Yet they have not yet attained it all — which is how this program is judged. Their goal is in their crosshairs now, though. Thank goodness for TikTok.