High school football: Bonneville grinds out win over Box Elder

WASHINGTON TERRACE — Bonneville coach Matt Williams was not thrilled with his Lakers 7-0 win over Box Elder Thursday evening, but he'll take it.

"More than anything, we are happy to get the win," he said. "The kids may have overlooked them, that was definitely not our best game, and I think we took some steps backward on offense. But a win was what we needed to get in the playoffs, and a win was what we got."

A football purist may have been ill watching the two teams make mistake after mistake. Both teams opening drives resulted in turnovers — Box Elder's Stephen Kostoff picked off a pass, and Bonneville's John Hughes recovered a fumble. Neither team could put together any type of consistency on offense as either penalties, turnovers or big losses resulted in the two teams combining for under 350 total yards of offense.

"I'd like to think that the defense stepped up and made the plays on both sides," said Williams. "They run a different type of formation (3-5-3), and then they blitzed a lot of linebackers at us. I don't think we did a very good job of picking up where people were coming from.

"Our defense was very prepared. Coach (Jantz) Afuvai called a great game defensively, and the guys went out and executed very well," added Williams.

The Lakers killed their own momentum several times with penalties. The drew nine flags for 90 yards on a variety of offenses. The one consistent thing was Bonneville did not allow Box Elder to even sniff the end zone. The Bees had only one scoring chance and it came on a badly missed 46-yard field goal attempt.

The only offense the team needed came on its first drive of the second quarter. A 43-yard catch by Devin Mickles set up the Lakers at the Box Elder 20-yard line. Two plays later, Adam Farnsworth took a pitch from quarterback Todd Aubrey and scampered 15 yards for the touchdown.

Bonneville forced more turnovers including a fumble, a Hughes' interception, and a turnover on downs to keep the Bees from ever getting a chance to tie. The Lakers had one golden chance to score stopped just before halftime as Jeremy Galvin intercepted a pass in the endzone.

"We really thought we would play a better game," said Hughes, "but I guess we got the job done, and now we can start focusing on the playoffs."

With the win and Woods Cross losing, Bonneville claims the No. 4 seed from Region 5 and travels to play Region 7's No. 2 seed — most likely Mountain View — next week in the 4A playoffs.

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