GameDay: DV dealing with injuries as St. Mary's looms

The injury bug is making its way around the Ahwatukee Foothills football teams.

Last week, Mountain Pointe hobbled its way into a loss against Chandler Hamilton. The Pride still haven't fully recovered.

This week, it's Desert Vista (3-2) that's forced to reshuffle things heading into a matchup against Phoenix St. Mary's (2-3) tonight at home.

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• Video preview: DV vs. St. Mary's

The biggest loss was defensive end Devon Kennard, the state's top recruit who was lost for the season to a torn ACL Sept. 19.

But the list grows from there.

- Defensive end Danny Mullarkey missed the end of last week's loss to Peoria Centennial. He has been battling shoulder problems, and it was revealed this week that he has a deep thigh bruise. Mullarkey is questionable for tonight.

- Middle linebacker Lee Williams, the team's leading tackler, has a bum knee and may not play tonight.

- Safety Jake van Raaphorst (concussion, sprained ankle) has played a total of nine quarters this season. He still hasn't fully recovered.

- Quarterback Cody Sokol is banged up, not the least of which is an injury to a finger on his throwing hand.

- Running back Marcus Washington, who already missed a game recovering from offseason leg surgery, injured his knee against Gilbert Mesquite.

- Two-way lineman Conner Wilson (separated shoulder) missed Sept. 26's game against Mesquite.

- Lineman David Kraus injured his knee in summer workouts and is out for the year.

"It's just part of football," said DV coach Dan Hinds. "Really, I think every team's experiencing it and does experience this every year. For us, I think it was pretty prolific when Devon went down, obviously. That was a big one."

The losses have left the Thunder scrambling, especially on offense.

First-year offensive coordinator Don Rezac said he had visions of running his new attack behind Kraus (6-foot-3, 295 pounds) and Wilson (6-foot, 260 pounds). Quickly, though, those dreams vanished with Kraus' injury, which also forced Wilson to move over on the line.

The growing pains have been there early in the season, but were never more evident than last week's 20-7 loss to Centennial, when DV was held to negative-26 yards rushing.

"I think we're still waiting for it to click," Hinds said. "It hasn't clicked yet, really. Obviously. When it does click, though, I think it's going to be real good."

Last year, the Thunder used a two-week stretch of games against St. Mary's and Yuma (45-10 and 44-0 wins, respectively) to spark its offense en route to the state title game.

Entering that same stretch this week, Hinds said St. Mary's wouldn't be the same cake walk.

"St. Mary's is a much better football team this year," Hinds said. "It's not a deal where we can say, ‘This is a chance to play everybody.' It's not that. It's the kind of deal where we've got an opportunity, like every week, to come back and get on a win streak.

"We need to do that at this point," he added. "There's no time to waste. If we don't do that now, it's going to be too late to get on a roll."