Pusch Ridge Ends Its Title Drought with 2024 3A Championship
Arizona — November 30, 2024
Pusch Ridge Christian Academy ended a nine-year wait for a state championship, defeating top-seeded ALA-West Foothills 26-7 on November 30, 2024, to capture the AIA 3A football state title — the program's first since 2015.
Entering the game as the No. 4 seed against an undefeated ALA-West Foothills team that had rolled through the regular season at 13-0, Pusch Ridge wasn't given much of a chance on paper. The Lions had other ideas, controlling the championship game from start to finish and denying ALA-West Foothills a perfect season in the process.
The 19-point margin of victory reflected a complete performance from a Pusch Ridge program that had quietly built toward this moment over several seasons. For a Tucson-area school with a smaller enrollment than many of its 3A peers, ending a near-decade title drought against an unbeaten opponent stood as one of the bigger accomplishments across any classification that December.
For ALA-West Foothills, the loss ended a perfect season one win short of a championship, a tough way to finish a year that had otherwise gone exactly to plan.