To the average football observer, it's how legends are born.

To Simley coach Chris Mensen and the rest of the Spartans, freshman Christian Urbina's remarkable debut at quarterback Tuesday was exactly what they expected.

Filling in for starter Tim Pietsch, who suffered a broken collarbone in Simley's final regular-season game, the diminutive Urbina — his height isn't listed on the Spartans' official roster, but 5-feet-9 seems generous — threw four touchdown passes to lift the defending Class 4A state champions to a 28-6 victory over South St. Paul in the Class 4A, Section 3 quarterfinals.

"He's super savvy for a 14-year-old," Mensen said. "He's cool as a cucumber. He doesn't get rattled. We tried to keep it simple and he's like, 'I can take more. We can do more.' So we were able to run our normal concepts and then some."

As defending champs, expectations were always going to be high for the Spartans this season, despite losing 17 seniors from a year ago. They went 5-3 in the regular season and went into Tuesday's game as clear favorites.

The loss of Pietsch threw some uncertainty into the mix, but Mensen said the experience many of the returning players gained last year paid dividends Tuesday.

"At the end of the day, it's the seniors that lead you. And we have a phenomenal group of seniors," he said. "They were there last year and they got the guys with less experience to follow along and jump on the bandwagon."

Simley scored a touchdown in each quarter. The Spartans got off to a quick start when Urbina lofted a perfect pass to senior Lucio Rivera for a 37-yard touchdown.

After South St. Paul cut the lead to one point, 7-6, Urbina and Rivera hooked up again for a 21-yard score on the final play of the first half.

Urbina added to his fabulous evening with a 62-yard scoring pass to Jerrod Jones in the third quarter and put the cherry on top with a 1-yard scoring toss to Connor Binley in the fourth quarter.

After the game, senior linebacker Jake Stanton shook his head and smiled with admiration over Urbina's first varsity start.

"A freshman stepping up into a varsity sport at any level is not easy," Stanton said. "Christian came out here and did pretty good for us tonight."