He Was Up 56-0 on a Team With 16 Players — So He Called an Onside Kick, Won 63-0, and Lost His Job

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2026

Let’s rewind the tape. Not to a Power 5 podium, not to a coach with a $50 million roster and a microphone problem. Rewind it to a high school field in Eugene, Oregon, where the scoreboard already told the whole story — 56-0, late in the first half — and one grown man looked at that scoreboard, looked at the other sideline, and decided the game needed one more twist of the knife. Marist Catholic head coach Zach Loboy called an onside kick. Up fifty-six. Against a Cottage Grove team that, according to NFHS Network footage reported by USA Today, had about 16 players suited up. Sixteen. Some programs can’t field a scout team with 16. Cottage Grove was trying to finish a football game with them.

Understand what an onside kick is for. It is a desperation play, a possession-stealing gamble built for teams that are losing and running out of clock — the trailing team’s last crowbar to pry a game back open. There is exactly one situation in football where it makes competitive sense, and being ahead by eight touchdowns is not it. So when Marist lined it up with 1:47 left in the first half, per USA Today, the call had no football problem left to solve. The game was over. The statement, if anybody was still trying to make one, had been made seven touchdowns ago. All the onside kick could do was tell a skeleton roster, on the record and on camera, that 56-0 was not enough humiliation for one evening. That is not coaching aggression. That is a grown-up forgetting who the scoreboard is for.

Here is the sequence, because the tape is unforgiving and it deserves to be read slowly. Cottage Grove actually recovered the onside kick — the one moment of defiance available to them all night. Then, on the possession that followed, Marist intercepted a pass, and scored again with under 30 seconds left in the half to make it 63-0, according to USA Today and Lookout Eugene-Springfield. Read that again. The onside kick did not even succeed, and it still produced another touchdown, because everything about the matchup was that lopsided. A team with 16 suited players does not have the depth to absorb a coach on the other sideline treating the second quarter like a Madden lobby. Every extra snap was another chance for an exhausted kid playing both ways to get hurt in a game that had stopped being a contest sometime around 28-0.

The adults in the room stopped it

And then, to their credit, the other adults in the building did what the man with the headset would not: they stopped it. The second half was never played. Marist athletic director Rick Gardner, Cottage Grove athletic director Garrett Bridgens and Lane County Football Association commissioner Mike Whitty agreed together that calling the game at halftime was in everyone’s best interest, The Register-Guard reported. Bridgens was careful to protect his own kids on the way out, making clear this was not a forfeit and not his players or coaches refusing to continue — it was the administrators and the officials’ commissioner deciding together to end a night that should never have reached 63-0 in a half. That distinction matters. Cottage Grove’s players did not quit. They were rescued from a situation somebody else kept making worse, and there is a canyon of difference between the two.

By Monday, Oct. 12, the bill came due. Gardner emailed the team’s parents that the school had removed Loboy as head varsity football coach, effective immediately, The Register-Guard reported, and principal Bob Fraley’s message to families said a change in leadership was necessary to reflect the school’s mission and values, per FootballScoop and Lookout Eugene-Springfield. Gardner did not hide behind a statement, either. He told The Register-Guard that what happened was “not reflective of the school’s mission and how we want to treat our opponents,” and that in this case the program “definitely fell short.” He declined to elaborate beyond that, and honestly, he did not need to. The score, the clock and the kick said everything. When a school has to apologise for how its own team won, the coach has not been fired for losing the room. He has been fired for embarrassing the letterhead.

This was a championship coach, which makes it worse

Now here is the part that keeps this from being a simple story about some overmatched coach cracking under pressure. Zach Loboy knew better, because Zach Loboy had done better. He served as Marist’s defensive coordinator before taking over as head coach, and he led the Spartans to the Oregon Class 4A state championship in 2024 — the program’s first title since 2009 and its sixth overall, beating Henley 30-6 in the final, per FootballScoop. This season was a rebuild: a big senior class graduated off that title team, Marist came into Friday at 2-3, and the win moved them to 3-3 overall and 2-1 in Sky-Em League play, per USA Today. A coach in a transition year, with a proud program, watching his team finally put a whole half together — you can understand the temptation to let it rip. Understanding it is not excusing it. The championship on his résumé is exactly why the standard is higher for him. He had stood on the top of Oregon 4A football. He knew what the sport looks like when it is done right, and he knew what 16 kids on the other sideline were enduring, because everybody in that stadium knew.

Somebody will make the backups argument, so let’s rewind that too. Yes, in a blowout you let your reserves play, and yes, reserves deserve real snaps run with real effort — nobody on this desk is asking any kid to take a knee for a half. But an onside kick is not a backup getting his reps. It is a head coach’s call, made from the sideline, with one purpose: steal another possession you do not need against a team that cannot match you. A backup tailback running off-tackle is football. A surprise possession grab at 56-0 is a message, and the message is about the sender. Send your second string in, run your base offence, punt on fourth down like a program that has been there before — because Marist, six titles deep, has been there before. Act like it was the whole assignment.

Precision matters on this segment, so let’s be precise about where the horn does not land. It does not land on Marist’s players, who ran the play their coach called, the way players are taught to do. It does not land on Cottage Grove’s players, the wronged party here, 16 deep and still recovering onside kicks in a 56-0 game — if anything, the tape is the receipt for their toughness. And it does not land on the school, which looked at its own championship-winning coach, in the middle of a season, and chose its stated values over the awkwardness of a Monday firing. Institutions almost never do that. They statement-and-move-on. Marist actually moved. Credit where it is due, before the horn, the way we always do it here.

For the record, Loboy has not told his side publicly yet: he did not immediately respond to The Register-Guard’s requests for comment and did not return a call from Lookout Eugene-Springfield. If he speaks, this desk will update the story, because the tape gets the last word here, not the silence. In the meantime, the program moves on without him: offensive line coach Jake Lowther, who joined the staff this year after serving as an assistant at Cascade High School in Turner, is the interim head coach, per The Register-Guard. Marist’s next game is Friday, Oct. 16, on the road at North Bend, where both teams sit 3-3 overall and 2-1 in league play, per Lookout Eugene-Springfield. Sixty-three points, and the season still has to be finished by somebody else.

The verdict

Donkey of the Day goes to Zach Loboy’s onside kick — and to the judgment behind it. Up 56-0, late in the first half, against 16 suited players, a championship coach chose one more possession his team did not need, and it cost him the job he had won a state title in. The lesson is not complicated, and every coach at every level already knows it: when the game is over, your job changes from winning it to conducting it — protecting the kids on both sidelines, including the ones who will never wear your colours. The scoreboard said 63-0, and for once the scoreboard was not the most lopsided thing in the stadium. The decision was. Hee-haw. The tape does not lie, and neither did Marist’s answer: win the right way, or do not be surprised when winning costs you everything.