South Summit High School is once again the champions of Utah’s 2A football.
The Wildcats pummeled the Grand County Red Devils of Moab 50-25 in the title game. Coach Mike Grajek says that the score was a lot closer near the end of the first half when the wildcats pulled away.
“Grand’s a really good football team. They’re really big. I told the kids don’t gauge the whole afternoon on how the first quarter goes. We tend to kind of wear teams out a little bit. There was four minutes left in the second quarter and we were up 16-13 and then we end up scoring like 22 points in four minutes. Went into halftime up 38-13.”
Quarterback Kael Atkinson threw four touchdown passes to Jared Dansie. Atkinson also ran in for one touchdown. Hagen Miles and Bruce Mitchell lead the defense in tackles and held the Red Devils to just two touchdowns in the first half. Grand added two more scores in the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach.
Coach Grajek says that this team returned just four starters from last years State Championship team, the whole team stepped up and filed their role.
“We had 18 seniors and we actually started all 18 of them and then a handful of juniors. Not counting special teams, we started 22 guys on Saturday. That’s a credit and compliment to our assistant coaches to get kids ready and the kids to accept the challenge to work hard enough to be a starter. Just a great group of kids most of them played together their whole life. We might not have had the best players but obviously we had the best team.”
Coach Grajek says he has faith in the programs process and hopes it will continue to lead to success as the kids put in the work.
“A lot of credit goes to these kids’ parents to allowing them to put the time in and be dedicated to something greater than themselves. We’ve got great community support, great school support. Lastly, they did it all together, you know it wasn’t just the 18 seniors it takes clear from the Freshman on up. It’s a whole process to get that done.”
That’s South Summit Football Coach Mike Grajek. The Wildcats finished the season with an 11-1 record and were the Utah 2A State Champs.
