Marana beat Corona del Sol 20-0 Thursday night at home and now the Tigers will wait, like their namesake, ready to pounce once the team finds out which opponent they will host next Tuesday in the first round of the 6A Flag Football State Tournament. Marana finished the regular season with a 12-0 record and a No. 3 ranking but the final set of rankings used for playoff seeding will remain unknown until they are released Saturday morning on the live Bracket Show to be streamed on the NFHSNetwork between 8 -10 a.m.

Corona del Sol finished the inaugural season with a 5-7 record and a No. 16 ranking. The top 16 teams will make the state playoffs but the Aztecs are on the edge and the final ranking could fall either way. At any rate, it was a remarkable season for the Aztecs considering head coach Emily Eswonia came in with no experience on the football field and none of her players had ever competed in the sport prior to tryouts.

“I kind of got thrown into this role, we were supposed to have another head coach and then she went on maternity leave so I came into this not knowing very much anything and now I know a bunch about football,” Eswonia said. “Also the girls. None of them have ever played before, never. This is our first season and we didn't have a club team or anything like that at our school so this is their first season's ever playing.”

Eswonia was a standout volleyball player at Marcos de Niza and North Carolina Central in college so she comes in with plenty of athletic knowledge and her sophomore quarterback, Alana James, has over 1,300 yards passing including 177 against Marana. This team will be a force in the future.

For Marana, head coach Shaun Lara, the expectations were high but no one could have predicted this kind of success.

“I knew we were going have some success early on just by knowing the talent we have and hoping we would come together but I didn't I didn't know we were going to go undefeated, most varsity sports don't do that,” Lara explained. “If you look at this the score sometimes that doesn't really show the true story of most football games. Early on, we weren't clicking. We weren't a team, we were just a bunch of athletes coming together. Now we are really clicking people are picking each other up when something bad happens and they're celebrating stuff together and things are happening. So it's amazing.”

Sophomore QB Roxi Singer finished with 180 yards passing with two TDs and the first came to fellow sophomore Malaysia Roebuck with 4:15 left in the first half. Thais Monson kicked the extra point and the Tigers led 7-0. Singer found Roebuck from 24 yards out with 10 seconds left in the third quarter and Amy Daer made a kick to make it 14-0.

James hit Delvina Martinez down the field for 42 yards on the next play but Monson was able to track Martinez down at the 28 and the Aztecs gave the ball back on downs. Grace Johnson had an interception for Corona del Sol with about 7:25 left but Adrian Griffin came up with an interception for Marana on the next play and senior QB Sophia Figueroa ran the ball in with 4:56 left for the 20-0 final.

Roebuck finished with 133 yards receiving on nine catches with two TDs, Singer had her 180 yards passing and two TDs and Figueroa had 67 yards passing and a rushing TD. Aaliyah van Heel had 72 yards receiving for Corona del Sol.