High school football notebook: Final games coming for seniors

For half of the seniors who take the field for their teams' opening round playoff games this weekend, reality will numbingly begin to set in as soon as they start to trudge off afterward.

In an instant, their high school football careers will be over.

Over the next few weeks, few things could arguably serve as better motivation for this year's senior football players than to know that if they don't win, it will all be over.

Hurricane coach Chris Homer thinks so.

His Tigers will attempt to bounce back from a humbling loss to Cedar last week by beating a very good Morgan team in the first round of the 3A tournament this week, and he pointed out that his seniors all know what will be at stake when they take the field on Friday — their high school football careers.

"The reality is we've got 28 seniors that don't want to play their last game on Friday night, and I think (Morgan) has got 20-plus seniors in the same boat," said Homer. "It's a beautiful thing that we have playoffs and don't have to rely on other people telling us when to play and who gets to go where like the college teams do. But it's a bunch of kids that don't want to play their last football game."

Cedar coach Todd Peacock, whose Redmen will attempt to somehow maintain the level of play they achieved against Hurricane last week, echoed those sentiments.

"The seniors kind of have a sense of — this is the end," said Peacock. "They wanna go out with a bang. So they see the importance a little more than the others. I think a real key as a coach is to get your younger kids that you're counting on to realize they may never be in this situation again."

TOP 25 WATCH: Considering the relative stability of the Deseret News Top 25 rankings throughout this fall, it shouldn't come as a major surprise that there wasn't major movement in the final edition of this year's poll.

Indeed, the top 6 teams — No. 1 Bingham, No. 2 Timpview, No. 3 Cottonwood, No. 4 Lone Peak, No. 5 Fremont and No. 6 Davis — all retained their places from last week to this week, and there were only a handful of major movers.

Going up were Cedar, an upset winner in Week 10, and up-and-down Highland, which scored a decisive win over arch-rival East. Cedar climbed six spots to No. 15 and Highland rose seven spots to No. 16.

Meanwhile, the two teams they beat, Hurricane and East, both plummeted 10 spots. Hurricane dropped from seventh to 17th, while East fell from eighth to 18th. Olympus, a blowout loser to Bountiful, also dropped, shifting from 13th to 22nd.

TRUE HOME-FIELD DOMINANCE: When Skyline hosts Kearns in the opening round of the 5A tournament this Friday, the Eagles will be looking to extend their amazing string of postseason success at home.

Skyline is a staggering 35-0 on its pristine home field in the postseason, and the Eagles can make it 36-0 by beating Kearns.

e-mail: drasmussen@desnews.com