Johnson coach Richard Magembe has tried to tell anyone willing to lend an ear about his junior wide receiver, but the talent of Justice Moody may need to first be seen to be believed.

It was on full display on Friday at Two Rivers High School.

Moody tied a Johnson program record with six touchdowns — four receiving and two on the ground. The last of which was a 6-yard scoring run on a jet sweep with 24 seconds to play to give the Governors a 38-35 win over rival Highland Park.

Moody finished with six catches for 202 yards receiving. Oh, and he also had an interception.

Surely, even Magembe didn’t see this coming.

“I might sound like I’m making this up, but I honestly did,” Magembe said. “I told him before the season, ‘You’re a special player. Be humble, but I truly think you have a chance to break every single receiver record.’”

Not just at Johnson, but in the entire St. Paul City Conference. Friday’s touchdown tally tied the school mark set by Thomas Tapeh, who spent four years in the NFL.

“I expected a game like this out of him,” Magembe said. “I didn’t know it was going to be today, but I knew it was coming at some point.”

Moody can’t say the same.

“I ain’t going to lie, I didn’t know I had this in me,” he said. “I just played the best game of my life.”

And he did so through cramps — a common Week 1 condition — that plagued him throughout the second half. The ailment caused the three-way standout, who also had a couple lengthy kick returns, to miss a few more snaps than usual.

But every time a big play was required, he was on the field.

Like when Johnson faced a third-and-forever from the Highland Park 40-yard-line while trailing 28-26 midway through the fourth quarter. Moody, a 5-foot-9 shifty speedster with excellent technique, shook the coverage, as he did all day — even as the Scots attempted to commit multiple bodies to him — and broke free down the sidelines. Junior quarterback Ali Farfan hit him in stride for another score.

“I just knew I’m not going to die, (The cramps are) not going to kill me. I still had stuff left in the tank, still had stuff to leave on the field. So I just came back out and made the play,” Moody said. “I feel like, personally, I’m an underrated player in the state. So I’ve got to leave everything on the field. And we’re playing at Johnson, so we already don’t get as much opportunity. So I’m just leaving everything on the field.”

But the secret may not last much longer. Not with these types of performances from Johnson’s skill position players. Farfan threw for 396 yards on Friday, 151 of which went to junior wideout Anthony Stevenson. Farfan sought out a quarterback trainer in the offseason, and the added layers of preparation are paying early dividends.

The offensive explosion was needed Friday, because Highland Park’s ground game was nearly as effective as Johnson’s aerial attack.

The two-headed rushing attack of quarterback Jonah Sadowski and running back Isaac Johnson matriculated the ball down the field on a number of drives for the Scots, including one that Sadowski capped with a quarterback sneak touchdown to put Highland Park up 35-32 with just 81 seconds to play.

But as the Scots celebrated the score, Moody looked at the clock and immediately noted there was too much time remaining for Johnson.

He proceeded to put together a lengthy kick return, drew a pass interference penalty and then scored the game-winning touchdown.

“We were right in it, we had it and we let it slip away. The reality is we have a long way to go,” Highland Park coach Dave Zeitchick said. “We have a lot of guys that are playing that are really getting their first varsity experience, and they were lost some. Deer in the headlights some of the time.

“We didn’t want to lose today, but we knew there was going to be some developmental (aspect), and we think, at the end, when we pull it all together, we can be pretty tough.”

As could the Governors, who certainly don’t lack varsity experience. Farfan, Moody and others have been at this level since their freshmen campaigns, a product of playing for a program with a player tally that can nearly be counted with your fingers and toes. Friday’s resilient showing demonstrated just how far they’ve come in that time.

“I was preaching to them all offseason, ‘Hey, you guys aren’t babies anymore,’” Magembe said. “‘The standards should increase for yourselves, because you guys are capable. Because you took your lumps, and now it’s time to go show people what you’re made of.’”

Not just the people on the outside, but perhaps even within the school. Yes, numbers are currently an issue for a Johnson team oozing with top-end talent, but Moody is confident that may change.

“I feel like more people will come out when they see stuff like this happen. I think we’ll be straight in the long run,” he said. “I feel like we could be a state type of team.”

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The call was in their back pockets, waiting for the moment when circumstances were just right.

And when that time arrived Friday, Todd Rogalski and his St. Thomas Academy teammates executed perfectly.

Less than a minute after a game-tying touchdown, Rogalski blocked an Andover punt, giving his team possession of the ball at the Huskies’ 21-yard line with 38 seconds to play.

Three plays later, classmate Dominic Baez scored on a 10-yard run, giving the Cadets a season-opening, come-from-behind 21-14 road victory in a clash of two of the state’s top four teams in Class 5A a year ago.

“We practice for that,” said the junior Rogalski, whose team fell 34-31 to Chanhassen in the state title game in 2023, but lost key contributors like running back Savion Hart (now at Georgetown) and quarterback Maximus Sims (now at Minnesota State-Mankato). “We’ve got that one special call. I saw their splits were wide, so I just timed the snap and ran right through there. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the ball.

“It was a big moment. We didn’t want OT.”

It helps that Marwan Maalouf, the former special teams coordinator for the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts and Minnesota Vikings, is now the director of admissions at St. Thomas Academy and helping on head coach Travis Walch’s staff.

“He and our defensive coordinator said, ‘We’re going to have one pressure this week that we think can get home,’” Walch said. “They didn’t spend a lot of time on it, but what they did well is put our best players in the spots to make the play. That credit all goes to Marwan Maalouf and Joe Ties.”

The Cadets (1-0) were only in position to make such a play because of a huge fourth-quarter scoring drive kept alive on a 36-yard pass from senior quarterback Chase Young to junior Avery Buckner on 3rd-and-20 at the St. Thomas Academy 1-yard line.

From there, the offense kept moving, scoring on a 1-yard quarterback sneak by Young with 1:10 to play. The ensuing extra point tied the score 14-14.

“That one play changed everything for us,” Young said of Buckner’s catch. “We knew we could run the plays. Our coaches had confidence in us. There was never a doubt in our minds. But we needed a little spark to ignite the flame and that’s what that was.”

The game was tied 7-7 at halftime, but Andover retook the lead when senior quarterback Hudson Maynard scored on a 2-yard run with 4:42 to play in the third quarter.

“This was a learning experience,” said Huskies junior linebacker Nolan LaPointe, whose team beat St. Thomas Academy 55-29 in the season opener last year and advanced all the way to the state semifinals before falling to Chanhassen.

“You’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some. Sometimes you learn more from losing than winning. We just have to move on to next week.”

The Cadets, meanwhile, have made something of a habit of coming-from-behind, erasing a 23-0 deficit to beat Alexandria 42-30 in the state semifinals last season.

“I remember saying at the time that was a legacy win for a lot of reasons,” Walch said. “Our kids know now it can get this bad against that team and we can still find a way.

“We have belief based on what happened last year. This a brand-new team and you never know if they’re going to be able to carry through with the same effort. But they did. And that’s when you start saying it’s not just about having a great team last year. But maybe we’re really starting to build a great program.”

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By MARIA VERZA

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of Mexico’s most-feared drug lords, has been released from a U.S. prison after serving most of a 25-year prison sentence, authorities confirmed Friday.

A U.S. Bureau of Prisons official said Cárdenas Guillén had been released from prison and was placed in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would normally suggest he would be deported back to Mexico.

A Mexican official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said Cárdenas Guillén faces two arrest warrants in Mexico, making it likely he would be detained upon arrival.

The former head of the Gulf cartel was known for his brutality. He created the most bloodthirsty gang of hitmen Mexico has ever known, the Zetas, which routinely slaughtered migrants and innocent people.

Cárdenas Guillén was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010 and ordered to forfeit tens of millions of dollars. It was not clear why he did not serve his full sentence, but he had been extradited to the U.S. in January 2007.

The 57-year-old native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf cartel, based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.

He created the Zetas, a gang of former Mexican special forces soldiers who he recruited to become his private army and hit squad. They committed acts of terror that regularly involved slaughtering dozens of people, decapitating them or dumping heaps of hacked-up bodies on roadways.

The Zetas lived on long after Cárdenas Guillén was captured in 2003. By 2010, the Zetas had formed their own cartel, spreading terror-style attacks across Mexico as far south as Tabasco until their top leaders were killed or arrested in 2012-2013.

An offshoot of the Zetas, the Northeast cartel, continues to control the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas.

But Cárdenas Guillén’s own gang, the Gulf cartel, has become hopelessly splintered after more than a decade of bloody infighting between factions with names like The Metros, The Cyclones, The Reds and The Scorpions.

Cárdenas Guillén’s own nickname was “El Mata Amigos,” or “The one who kills his friends.”

Cárdenas Guillén’s most brazen act was when he surrounded and stopped a vehicle carrying two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and one of their informants in 1999 in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

His gunmen pointed their weapons at the agents and demanded they hand over the informant, who would almost certainly be tortured and killed. The agents toughed it out and refused, reminding him it would be a bad decision to kill employees of the DEA. Cárdenas Guillén eventually called off his gunmen, but not before reportedly saying “You gringos, this is my territory.”

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Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington, D.C.

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The Twins might not be quite where they want to be — they’d rather be leading their division than in third place as they currently sit, of course — but in the grand scheme of things, they’re where they hoped they would be.

There’s a month left to go in the regular season and they’re currently in line to win a wild card with the chance to fight for the American League Central title in September.

“That’s actually a message that I talked to our team about a few days ago,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “This is what you want. You want to be going into September in a good spot with an opportunity to play really important games throughout the month. If you do your job well, you have a chance to go to the playoffs and maybe win a World Series. That’s what we’re here for.”

Heading into Friday night’s action, the Twins were 3 1/2 games back from the division-leading Cleveland Guardians and 1 1/2 games behind the Kansas City Royals. Before the weekend started, they were 3 1/2 games ahead of the Boston Red Sox, the closest team chasing them in the wild card race, meaning they were just as close to leading the division as falling out of a playoff spot.

And, importantly, the Twins will play all of those teams in a pivotal September, facing the Royals next weekend and then Cleveland and Boston from Sept. 16-22.

September sets up to be a month of scoreboard watching within the Twins’ clubhouse.

“I think everyone would be naive to say they’re not checking out the scores in the stadium, seeing what the ribbon board says,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “We have four against Cleveland against and three against KC so we still have lots of opportunity to make up games. There’s still a month of baseball left. You look at where we’re at now … Three back or something … it could easily turn to us being three up at the end of the year.”

The Twins have the easiest schedule remaining of the three AL Central teams in contention with their opponents having a collective .484 winning percentage. Cleveland’s schedule is slightly hardest and Kansas City’s is the most difficult of the three.

Entering Friday’s action, FanGraphs gave the Twins an 84.8 percent chance of making the playoffs. So yes, this is where the Twins want to be, despite a recent spell that saw them go 2-8 in their 10 games leading up to Friday’s series opener with the Toronto Blue Jays.

“This is what you dream of when you’re working out in the offseason. This is what you want in spring training when you all get together as a team and you’re hoping for a … postseason push,” third baseman Royce Lewis said. “We’re right where we need to be, man. We’re a handful of games away and we get to face both these teams coming up soon that are ahead of us. I’m very much so looking forward to it. I know it’s in our hands.”

Briefly

Max Kepler (knee) was out of the lineup on Friday. He missed Monday’s game because of the issue but played Tuesday and Baldelli said Kepler did not feel so great after that. Baldelli said Kepler would work out on Friday and they would see how he was doing. … The manager did not have an update on Carlos Correa (foot) and Byron Buxton (hip) after Thursday’s off day, except to say Buxton is further along towards a return than Correa. … Former Twin José Berríos is scheduled to take the ball on Saturday against rookie Zebby Matthews.

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