Mateo Arenas is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Pinnacle High School for AZPreps365.com

The 2022 season for Pinnacle High School football became a milestone year for the program, as the team reached the Arizona 6A state championship game for the first time in school history. With a breakout quarterback in then-sophomore Wyatt Horton and highly recruited pass-catchers in Miles Libman and Duce Robinson, Arizona’s top recruit for the class of 2023, the Pioneers were one of the top teams in the state.

But with Libman and Robinson off to Stanford and USC, respectively, in 2023 there were many questions about the Pioneers’ offense headed into Horton’s junior season, especially after the transfer in, then out of Pinnacle by 2024 top quarterback recruit Dylan Raiola in the offseason.

Through it all, Horton remained with the team and has proved to be the key to the Pioneers’ offense this season. It helps that this season has also seen the emergence of Jace Pina, a junior wide receiver that Horton has relied on throughout his entire football career.

“You get [the ball] in Wyatt’s hands,” Pinnacle head coach Dana Zupke said. “You’ve got this group of receivers that are a little unsung compared to what we had last year, but people will know their names soon enough, because they are pretty talented. [Wyatt and Jace] are good friends and believe in each other. I think that shows in their play.”

Horton and Pina are “three-star” prospects, ranked as top-30 recruits for Arizona’s class of 2025 by 247 Sports. But that is not the only thing the two have in common. The pair has known each other since first grade, and has spent countless years together playing youth football. With the added bond of a friendship between their parents, it was clear they were destined to grace the gridiron together as Pioneers.

“We've known each other literally our whole lives,” Horton said. “Whether I would want it or not, we're built-in brothers. He's a heck of a receiver, too. That's always what a quarterback wants. Someone that I can trust, and that's reliable, and that's just gonna make plays when I need him to make plays, and that's exactly what Jace does.”

Pina described their relationship as a Joe Burrow-Ja’Marr Chase type link, referring to the Cincinnati Bengals players who tore up college football at Louisiana State University just as they have done in the NFL. Like Burrow and Chase, it is not always sunshine and rainbows in football, but the Pinnacle players can always power through the turbulence of the game.

“We've always had like the best relationship ever,” Pina said. “Obviously we fight sometimes, and we argue over little things. Like if he overthrew or underthrew a ball in practice, or if I ran not-so-good of a route. At the end of the day, we're brothers, and I’ll always have his back for everything. Whenever that ball's in the air, I'm going to make him proud by making sure it's in my hands.”

That chemistry has helped the Pioneers start off 6-2  and AZPreps365 has Pinnacle slotted in a top-10 spot in its recent 6A rankings. Having similar recruiting pedigrees, Horton and Pina have taken recruiting trips together, including a visit to the University of Colorado. Both players already have received Division I offers, and have leaned on each other throughout the recruitment process, which is just beginning for the juniors.

Yet at the end of the day, the bond between the two stretches outside the lines of their Pinnacle partnership.

“We're always hanging out with each other,” Pina said. “I feel like even without football, we still would have been really close, but football definitely brought that chemistry together. That's really turned into us doing really great things on the field.”