Coach David Millward said the Grantsville Cowboys had circled Thursday night’s home game against the Juab Wasps for a long time.
After losing a pair of close contests to the Wasps last season and then enduring a long bus ride home last week following at loss at Hurricane, the Cowboys took out their aggression and handed Juab a 42-7 defeat in a battle of 3A powers.
Dawson Dunlevy returned the second-half kickoff for a score and Robert Rounds returned two interceptions to the end zone as the fourth-ranked Cowboys improved their record to 4-1 overall and forced game officials to enforce the UHSAA’s 35-point “mercy rule.”
“When you get a score on special teams and on defense, you know things are going your way,” Millward said. “Our defense just played great. This was a good game for us in every area, except penalties.”
Grantsville was penalized for over 100 yards but escaped its coach’s wrath about discipline and mistakes by forcing five turnovers and getting a near-perfect game from junior quarterback Graeson Warren, who threw two first-half touchdowns.
Millward admitted there were still only a few smiles on the bench, despite a 14-7 halftime lead, but hat started to change when Dunlevy got the crowd involved by taking the third-quarter kickoff, breaking a series of tackles and rumbling 90 yards for a touchdown.
Warren padded the margin a few minutes later with a 41-yard touchdown run, and then Juab’s mistakes proved its fate.
Grantsville forced five turnovers – four interceptions and a fumble – and it was Rounds who was in the middle of the most-memorable.
He stopped an important Juab drive by stepping in front of a receiver, then returned the ball 95 yards for a touchdown.
He added a 40-yard return for a score with 7:39 left in the game that kept the clock running.
“We’ve been thinking about this one for a long time,” said Millward, noting that Grantsville lost a double-overtime thriller at Nephi last season and then saw its season end when Juab scored with 2:30 left in the 3A state semifinals on the same field.
“A lot of things had to go right for us to win a game this way, and we’ve got to keep improving because we have some good teams ahead of us. If we clean things up like we need to and we can get healthy, I’d be curious to see how good this team could be.”
Warren, a 5-foot-8 junior who can be electrifying any time he has the ball, completed 11 of 15 passes for 106 yards and also ran for 60 more.
Juab’s offense was led by quarterback Price Armstrong, who had big games in both of the Wasps’ wins over Grantsville last season. This time, he completed 20 of 35 throws for nearly 200 yards and a touchdown pass to Brady Gempeler.
The four interceptions proved costly, however, and Juab also was never able to develop a consistent running attack.