ST. GEORGE — If indeed Friday was Layton Christian’s last time playing 1A football, it certainly went out with a bang.
The heavily favored Eagles dominated Kanab in the 1A title game at Utah Tech University, rolling to a 55-19 victory to earn the first football state title in school history.
“Last year was hard going that far and taking a big loss, but coming back this year I felt strong, the whole team felt better as a team, and we came out with that big win so it felt good,” said senior running back Jessaia Giatras, who set the tone all day with 178 yards rushing and two touchdowns.
Layton Christian is fully expected to bump up to 2A football next year in the next UHSAA realignment cycle, but will be doing so with that elusive title.
“I’m so proud of these kids and the Layton Christian family. They’ve been down for so long. It’s only right, these kids they put in the hard work and to be able to come out here and go earn this state championship for the first time in school history, proud of my guys,” said Layton Christian coach Ray Stowers.
Layton Christian lost to Duchesne 18-14 in last year’s state title game at Weber State, but with a chance to make school history again on Friday it left little doubt thanks to an explosive offense that racked up 469 yards, 344 of which came on the ground.
Kanab’s offense found running lanes much more difficult to come by with 81 yards on the ground and just 222 yards overall.
“Everything was working. Our guys up front, like I always say it starts with them, our run game obviously that’s what we start everything with. They set the tone up front offensively running the ball and it opened things in the passing game. Hats off to our defense holding them to one score in the first half,” said Stowers.
After punting on its opening series of the game, Layton Christian scored touchdowns on its next six drives to bury the underdog Cowboys, who upset No. 2 seed Enterprise in the semifinals last week to reach the title game.
Layton Christian finished the season with a 10-3 record, with all three of their losses coming against higher-classification teams — San Juan, West Side, Idaho, and Sugar-Salem, Idaho. Against 1A teams in Utah, the Eagles went 7-0 with a 276-36 scoring differential.
Stowers took over as head coach at Layton Christian in the final two weeks of the 2018 season, and vowed to put in the work to make the program better. The players bought in and they nearly reached the 1A pinnacle last season despite being a relatively young team.
With eight starters back on both sides of the ball this season their size and talent was simply too much for the rest of 1A.
Giatras opened the scoring for Layton Christian at the 1:30 mark of the first quarter, scoring on a 5-yard TD that gave the Eagles the early 6-0 lead.
Kanab had a decent response, moving the ball down to Layton Christian’s 32-yard line, but it failed to convert on short yardage on third and fourth down.
From there the floodgates opened for the favorites.
During the final 8:57 of the first half, Manu Vaitaki scored on a pair of rushing touchdowns and Malik Johnson on a pair of receiving touchdowns from Jose Ribeiro as the Eagles extended the lead to 34-0 by halftime.
“Once we find our groove it’s straight uphill from there,” said Giatras.
In the second half, Kanab found a bit of rhythm offensively, scoring on its first possession to close to 34-7, but Ribeiro tossed another score to push the lead to 41-7 and then Johnson returned a punt return 69 yards with 27 seconds left in the third quarter to set up a running clock in the fourth quarter.
“I know good things come when you work hard and that was my plan the whole time,” said Stowers.