High school football: Hurricane rising — Tigers' transition to 3A powerhouse is almost complete

From the day Chris Homer took over as head football coach at Hurricane High School seven years ago, he's had a grand vision of establishing a powerful program down in southern Utah.

The goal was to turn Hurricane into a 3A version of Skyline, which was still the benchmark program in the state when Homer joined the Hurricane coaching staff as an assistant coach 11 years ago.

With hard work, he believed, the Tigers could be the type of team that, year in and year out, was in the hunt to win state championships.

Hurricane's impressive march into this Friday's 3A championship game against Juan Diego is a sign the program is heading in the right direction. And in reality, even if the Tigers don't win it all this Friday, the culture at Hurricane High has already changed when it comes to high school football.

It's not enough just to make the playoffs anymore, or even win a playoff game. Just a few years after Hurricane advanced to the state semifinals with a 12-0 record in 2005 — eventually losing to Logan — Hurricane was back at the Rice-Eccles Stadium turf last weekend and beat Morgan to move on to the championship finale.

With two appearances on the turf in the past four years, Homer clearly has the ball heading in the right direction.

"The 2005 team was a huge part of us believing this year that we could do it, because we'd done it before," said Homer. "It's an attainable goal, more than just a dream. It's not something that's just out there."

Make no mistake about it, Homer knows he's just sniffed the surface about establishing a consistent, winning program. After all, prior to this year's impressive 12-1 run into the championship game, the Tigers' record in 2006 and 2007 was 3-8 and 5-6, respectively, with both seasons ending in a first-round playoff exit.

Even those losing teams have helped build the tradition, though.

"Every class, as I've kind of reflected on this this week, is a part of this," said Homer. "That goes back to this whole building the program."

Ironically enough, there were quite a few people in the Hurricane community who wanted to see Homer and his coaching staff ousted prior to this season. In fact, there was a pretty popular petition passed around and signed by quite a few detractors who were disappointed with the combined 8-14 record of the past two years.