BRIGHTON — When a leader leaves his party after resounding success, it leaves a bit of a vacuum toward the top of the ticket. Erie football, the returning Class 4A state champion, was lucky enough to be gifted with plenty of talent that’s been waiting in the wings.
On Friday night at Brighton High School, the Tigers proved as much when they smacked the Bulldogs 45-0 in their 2024 opener. No Blake Barnett needed.
In their first game since winning the championship — and since the exit of their Colorado touchdown-leading quarterback — four new candidates emerged to shine a light down their path through their new 5A classification.
Junior Braylon Toliver showcased his speed early in the game, collecting 101 yards and two touchdowns in the first half alone. Senior Gavin Lusk moved the chains like a machine, recording 88 yards and one touchdown in the opening two quarters.
Senior quarterback Ronin Ward ended his night with 144 passing yards and a 40-yard touchdown pass, then ran for 26 more yards. Another senior, Donovan O’Brien, punished the Bulldogs with two touchdowns of his own on offense and special teams. He recorded 83 yards on offense.
They all took a break after the opening kickoff in the second half.
The trio of seniors — Ward, Lusk and O’Brien — along with Toliver have provided the type of separation of powers that any program would be envious of. All four have stepped up to take the reins of the team.
“We lost some big players, like Blake Barnett, Jackson Cowgill, Mason Cowgill, but I like to tell (my teammates) it’s really a similar team,” Lusk said. “We have a lot of talent. We have talent coming in, and everybody has doubts on us. I’ve even heard some self-doubt in the team, but I just like to tell them that we have a lot of returners. It’s not like we lost everything.”
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A few weeks earlier, both Lusk and Toliver presented their cases for captainship to the rest of the team, a sort of political convention to sell their platform to the people. Lusk focused his message on proving the haters wrong. Toliver, generally a lead-by-example kind of guy, has begun to use his voice to sway the masses.
Both adopted a zero-tolerance policy against the Bulldogs during Week Zero of the 2024 season.
After the three early scores from Toliver and Lusk, seniors Carson Hageman and O’Brien accounted for two more first-half touchdowns, one on a 40-yard rocket from Ward, to give the Tigers a 36-0 lead at the midway break.
O’Brien opened the second half with a 94-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, which Mason Guven supplemented with a 30-yard field goal in the fourth.
None of it surprised head coach Jeff Giger.
“We do speeches for captainship,” Giger said. “We were teasing, ‘I think Gavin might have a career in politics,’ because of the way everybody was talking and struggling a little, and then Gavin gets up there. It was just a free for all and he just speaks like it was nothing to him.”
Toliver didn’t end up with that ‘C’ next to his name, but he’s still thrilled to see what he and the rest of his Tigers can put together this season. He and Lusk showed they’re not to be messed with.
“I think it’s just a big switch up. One of us is at slot, one’s at running back. And then if we’re blocking for each other, it’s just an incredible type of play. It just gives us more variety of plays, more people to get the ball to, more areas to spread it out,” Toliver said. “I’m really excited. It’s going to be a fun season. Summer went by quick, but we’re here. We need to make the most of it.”
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