No football coach wants his team to start a season with three losses, but Moapa Valley’s Brent Lewis has been around long enough to know that adversity can be a good thing.

The Pirates (9-4) face Churchill County (11-1) for the Class 3A state title at 10 a.m. Saturday at Reno’s Mackay Stadium, and the 24th-year coach feels his team is capable of overcoming one more obstacle.

Though Moapa’s coaching staff doesn’t know much about the Greenwave, Lewis knows they’re good. But he also knows his team’s nonleague losses to a trio of teams from Utah prepared his players for the moment.

“They’re solid up and down the lineup,” Lewis said of Churchill County. “They’re big, tall and lanky, and we’ll definitely have our hands full. But they’ve got to be just as worried about us as we are of them.”

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