High school football: 5 most intriguing results from Week 4
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With Week 4 now a wrap for Utah high school football, five of the state’s 17 regions kicked off region competition, but for most of the rest of them, that fourth game served as a final tune-up against non-region opponents before jumping into that hypercompetitive slate until the end of the season.
Here’s a look at some of the most eyebrow-raising results from Week 4 in this week’s Friday Flashback:
Sky View takes down a Region 1 foe
The intrigue of how Sky View handled Fremont, 35-7, has multiple layers to it, some that will be mentioned more than just here. First and foremost is the utter impressiveness with which the 4A Bobcats walked into hostile territory in Plain City and barely gave the Silverwolves a chance.
Fremont became the next unfortunate victim of Sky View senior running back/wrecking ball Brevin Egbert, who entered the game sporting over 600 rushing yards in just three weeks. Egbert went to work on the Fremont defense, scoring the first three touchdowns of the game, including a 60-yard rumble, as the Bobcats built a 21-0 halftime lead. Quarterback Carson Thatcher threw two touchdowns as well.
“I (was) really proud of our effort in all three phases of the game,” Sky View coach Chris Howell said. “Offensively, we had a really balanced attack. Our offensive line played really well again, and Thatcher made really good decisions. Defensively, we played our most complete game thus far in our season … We still have plenty of room for improvement but are pleased with where we are right now.”
Last Friday was a great example of how tough Region 11 is going to be this year. It’s going to be a battle week in and week out for the next five weeks.
Sky View remains undefeated in the early part of the season, while Fremont dropped to 0-4, two trends that are part of a bigger picture for their respective regions.
Weber gives Region 1 just three teams with a win
Starting with the losing side of that battle, Fremont’s 0-4 start is a stroke of bad fortune not confined to just the Silverwolves. Non-region play has hit a normally stalwart Region 1 field hard in 2023.
Weber traveled to Wasatch last Friday looking for its first win and thankfully got it, coming out on top in one of the biggest shootouts of the week, 62-41. The Warriors racked up 688 yards of offense, and even though they allowed 41 points, they still had some shining moments on defense with two interceptions and two sacks.
With the win, Weber moved 1-3, and with Region 1 play set to start next week, it’s surprisingly enough to put the Warriors in third place in the standings.
When realignment pushed the region’s usual last-place team, Clearfield, out of the picture, coaches expected the race to get tighter. Instead, the new-look Region 1 is looking more umbalanced than it has in a long time.
On one hand, Syracuse not only looks like the best team in the region, standing at 4-0, it appears to be one of a few teams that is a real contender for the state title race. Davis, at 3-1, also looks like a team that can make noise in the postseason and the region race.
But that looks like it could be it. Half the teams in Region 1 will enter region play without a win — Farmington, Layton and Fremont. Those losses cumulatively include 5A teams like Northridge and Bonneville, not to mention the Sky View loss.
In a region that has often been defined by its parity, it looks like it’ll take a lot of work for any team in the bottom four to break into the top two this season.
Cache Valley’s perfect weekend
On the flip side, Sky View’s win was a key piece of what turned out to be a great way to start Labor Day weekend for the folks living on the other end of Sardine Canyon, and it was emblematic of a better look for Region 11 as a whole.
The Region 11 landscape was messy in 2022 by most standards. Even in a 13-team classification, no team in the region ranked higher than fourth in RPI going into the playoffs; preseason favorite Green Canyon turned out to finish in last place, and the 4A state title game ultimately got relocated to St. George on account of both teams being from Region 10.
Fast forward to this season, and the region landscape is dominated less by flawed chaos and more by top-to-bottom football beauty.
The six teams in Region 11, five of which reside in Cache County plus neighboring Bear River, went a perfect 6-0 in non-region competition in Week 4. Beyond the Bobcats, Ridgeline similarly punched up a classification and pulverized 5A Cedar Valley, 49-7, and Green Canyon’s defensive approach proved successful yet again in a dogfight against Morgan, 15-14. Those three squads will all start the region slate at 4-0.
Elsewhere, Mountain Crest got back in the win column beyond the border, getting a 19-18 win over Minico, Idaho (Utah went 5-1 against out-of-state teams, for the record), Logan pulled out a really low-scoring one against Juan Diego, 14-7, and Bear River easily took care of business against Carbon, 58-0.
No team in Region 11 is worse than 2-2.
“Last Friday was a great example of how tough Region 11 is going to be this year,” Sky View coach Chris Howell said. “It’s going to be a battle week in and week out for the next five weeks.”
West Jordan wins with extra football in Orem
It wouldn’t be Friday Night Lights without some late-game drama, and West Jordan gave some nighttime thrills with a shootout win over Orem in overtime, 41-35.
Senior quarterback Jackson Roybal gave West Jordan everything he had as he connected with his receivers to the tune of five touchdowns and 280 passing yards.
One wouldn’t have thought this game was going to need more time to decide the winner based on how it started. The Jaguars built a 20-7 lead midway through the second quarter, yet Orem’s talent had them refusing to quit. The Tigers rallied and took a 21-20 midway through the third, and after West Jordan scored again, they struck right back to tie it up, 28-28.
When the Jaguars took a fourth-quarter lead, Orem bore down and forced the issue with a 2-yard game-tying TD pass with 12 seconds to go, forcing OT.
But West Jordan ultimately had the last laugh. Roybal found Dominic Overby right from the start for a 25-yard TD to win it.
“Our kids came out to prove something after last week’s disappointment, where we just didn’t play well in the second half,” West Jordan coach Ron Halbert said. “We had our best overall week of practice, and it showed last night against a good Orem team … Our kids fought hard every down until the very end. We challenged them to give us everything they had left in overtime, and we executed to perfection in OT. It was definitely a game of ups and downs, but we fought through it and got the much-needed win.”
Extra, extra football in North Sanpete
If Friday Night Lights is the accurate term to define what went down in West Jordan’s winning effort, there may not be an appropriate term to describe what went down in Mount Pleasant.
North Sanpete, which was still searching a for a win amidst a rough first few weeks, pulled out a victory in what could very likely be the strangest game of the 2023 season, taking down South Sevier, 13-7.
The Hawks fought fruitlessly with the Rams for 48 minutes just to end up with a mind-boggling 0-0 tie at the end of regulation. Some wild things happened to get to that point, including a goal-line fumble by North Sanpete and missed field goals from both teams in the fourth quarter.
If that wasn’t enough, the two teams completely flipped the script when overtime started. South Sevier got on the board first with a 25-yard shot to the end zone ending in a highlight-reel catch by senior Anthoney Cornelius. North Sanpete, which up to this point had scored just one offensive touchdown all season long, powered through the defense and scored to tie up the game on a 6-yard run from senior Cache Nicholson.
And then it got absolutely crazy.
South Sevier took the ball back and got gifted a huge penalty by the Hawks with a late hit out of bounds to set up first-and-goal at the 5. That was when Hawks defender Preston Madsen decided he’d had enough.
Madsen, the same defender who had the Rams’ go-ahead score caught on his head in the first OT, jumped in front of a cross-route on the ensuing play, intercepted the ball in the end zone and took it a full 103 yards back the other way for a game-ending, season-changing, first-win-clinching TD.
Just how everyone thought this game would go, right?
It bears noting that North Sanpete was actually playing in its long overdue home opener for the season. The burden of travel, Hawks head coach Tu Tui mentioned, was a relief to get away from for a week and helped the team elevate its performance.
“It was great to be home! Boys played with heart and were resilient last night,” Tui said. “We eliminated big plays. My boys know my favorite song lyric (from J Cole), “There’s beauty in the struggle,” and it was beautiful in Mount Pleasant last night.”
Final Note — Top Upsets of Week 4
Per Noland Perry’s Power Guide and game predictions, there were nine upsets across the state, and last Friday had some big ones.
Here were the top upsets from Week 4:
Beaver over Duchesne (27.2) — Duchesne won, 20-0
Lone Peak over Mountain Ridge (22.3) — Mountain Ridge won, 31-17
Milford over Providence Hall (16.9) — Providence Hall won, 22-21
Orem over West Jordan (14.8) — West Jordan won, 41-35, in OT
Copper Hills over Hunter (8.5) — Hunter won, 33-15
