COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — Once every November, as the sun sets in the west, it casts an especially warm glow across the El Capitan High School football field.

The residents of Colorado City, a town long known for its polygamist community and its notorious leader Warren Jeffs, gather en masse into the aging grandstands to watch the most popular sporting event of the year: the rivalry game between Arizona’s El Capitan Eagles and Utah’s Water Canyon High School Wildcats.

It’s a meeting that unites the border-straddling towns collectively known as Short Creek as kindred spirits. The game offers residents a chance to escape the day’s challenges and bond over one of America’s favorite pastimes.

But when the sun set over the football field this November, the glow was muted as it swept over the ba

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