High school football: Lone Peak earns spot in 6A championship with win over Skyridge

The opening Skyridge drive did not go well for Lone Peak in Thursday’s 6A semifinal at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, as the Falcons marched 80 yards in 10 plays to earn an early 7-0 lead over the Knights.

But Lone Peak’s Landan Goff answered with a 94-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and the Knights rallied to a 28-21 victory over Skyridge and advanced to the 6A championship game against Corner Canyon.

“It’s all about resiliency,” said Goff. “We just knew that was too early in the game to just give up. It was just one touchdown. I knew I had to step up for my team, so we went through and got it done.”

Goff’s kickoff return gave Lone Peak all the momentum it needed. The Knights defense soon forced a fumble and interception, which the offense capitalized on to run the score up 21-7.

The strong offense Skyridge had on its first drive suddenly disappeared and struggled to get into the red zone. The Falcons nearly ended the first half in a 14-point hole, though the offense found a spark and went 94 yards in a little over a minute to narrow the deficit to 21-14 with 19 seconds left before halftime.

It was a stark difference to how the regular season matchup between Skyridge and Lone Peak went. In that game, the Falcons only gave up two touchdowns to Lone Peak while they took the 21-16 win.

“Our problem was we allowed momentum to continue for about another quarter before we took it back,” said Lone Peak head coach Bart Brockbank about their regular season matchup with Skyridge.

“You can’t do that. Great teams don’t allow teams to take that momentum. I felt like today, when we had bad things happen, we actually came back and just executed, settled in and didn’t let them take the momentum.”

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Knights quarterback Kepa Niumeitolu quickly scored in the third quarter on a 21-yard pass to Isaac Staley, but the momentum didn’t last long as the Lone Peak defense gave up a touchdown on the ensuing offensive drive to make the score 28-21.

Lone Peak had a chance late in the third quarter to go up by two scores, but a missed field goal kept Skyridge within one touchdown. The Falcons defense did what it needed to do to give its offense a chance, and with 4:06 left in the fourth quarter, Skyridge had one last chance to even the score.

Lone Peak’s defense was not having it.

Over the course of three minutes, the Falcons only got 18 yards downfield. With 1:15 left in the game, Lone Peak’s Junior Tahi forced Skyridge’s Kaneal Sweetwyne to drop the ball and Bott Mulitalo recovered it, effectively securing the semifinal win.

Tahi also recovered a fumble early in the first quarter and leads Lone Peak with 9.5 sacks this season.

“Honestly, it’s all (assistant) coach (Ryan) Denney,” Tahi said. “He’s the genius behind all the plays, and if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do.”

Lone Peak and Skyridge have a short but strong history, and the Lone Peak semifinal win sets the all-time record between the two Region 3 rivals at 5-5.

The Knights move to the championship game, where they’ll face Corner Canyon. The Chargers have only lost one game this year, and it was to Lone Peak 28-21 a week after Corner Canyon defeated Florida’s IMG Academy.

The last time Lone Peak played in the 6A championship was in 2021, which it won 49-42 over Corner Canyon.