High school football: West completes region sweep with 31-24 win over Brighton
West’s defense pounced on the loose ball in Brighton’s end zone with the same relentlessness the team has shown all season — flipping the momentum and completing a perfect sweep of Region 6 with a 31-24 win Wednesday night.
Trailing 21-7 at half, a West punt pinned the Bengals inside their one-yard line on a rainy and cold night for football. Brighton quarterback Aisea Angilau dove on a rushed fumbled snap to dent the deficit with 7:56 left in the third quarter.
“It’s just our line, our linebackers and a whole team effort,” Angilau said. “I only scored because of them.”
After a Brighton punt and a clean break in the rain, senior quarterback Isaiah Su’esu’e unloaded and found favorite deep threat target Chachi Pan on a 65-yard strike down the sideline to tie the game.
“We just kept pounding it and pounding it. We decided to take a shot and Chachi, he made a play for us,” Su’esu’e said. “He was open so I had to deliver it to him.”
Brighton seized the early lead in a sideways deluge of precipitation, featuring a three-headed rushing attack between Kaden Morzelewski, Mason Haertel and Beau La Fleur. Haertel opened the scoring shrugging off a few tacklers on a 9-yard rush with 8:47 left in the opening quarter.
Morzelewski scored Brighton’s remaining first-half touchdowns on a 13-yard rollout to tight end Myles Peters combined with a 4-yard scamper just before halftime.
Su’esu’e got West on the board in the first half with a dart to wide receiver Kamden Lopati before Lopati rumbled down the middle of the field for a 67-yard score.
At halftime, West coach Olosaa Solovi said keeping calm and leaning on the offensive line were keys to flipping the game in the second half.
After Pan’s long touchdown, the teams traded field goals before West put the game on the shoulders of bruising senior running back Kelvin Malepeai as the fourth quarter temperatures dipped into the 40s.
The Panthers ground down the clock on a 77-yard drive, eating up nearly four minutes on nine Malepeai carries before he muscled in a two-yard touchdown for the decisive score, 31-24 with 1:06 left in the game.
“I like that responsibility, it’s really good, but at the same time I’ve got to thank my linemen for always doing the work for me,” Malepeai said.
After a 6-0 journey through a new region, Solovi said the gauntlet West has faced so far has prepared them for a playoff run.
“I expect someone from this region to go really deep, maybe two of them to get to Rice-Eccles,” Solovi said. “Hopefully that will be one of us, but I won’t be surprised if any one of these guys in our region gets deep in there.”
