High school football: Park City, Wasatch class of Region 10

The football landscape in Region 10 looks a lot different for the league's three holdovers, Park City, Wasatch and Union, this fall than it did last fall.

Gone are Judge and Uintah, taken away through the UHSAA's realignment process. Judge, which enjoyed really good football rivalries with all three of the schools it left behind, was shuttled to another 3A region, while Uintah, Union's arch-rival and a football program that the other two schools respected, was boosted up to 4A.

In their place, the UHSAA added football doormats Carbon and ALA to complete Region 10, making the league clearly not as powerful of a football region as it was last year.

Wasatch coach Steve North didn't try to mince words when discussing what he thinks realignment has done to Region 10's football picture.

"Our region is weak. It is," said North. "I think our region is probably the weakest one in 3A. It's weaker than it has been in the past. You lose Judge. You lose Uintah. Uintah's OK. They're not fantastic, but they come and play ball."

None of that is meant to be disrespectful to Carbon or ALA; it's just that North and everyone in his football program is sad to see Judge and Uintah go.

The feeling is largely the same up the road at Park City High.

Park City coach Brandon Matich said he wanted to reserve full judgment on Carbon and ALA until he had the chance to see them up close this fall, but his school enjoyed a really good football rivalry with Judge since he became the football coach back in 2005.

"We're gonna miss Judge. That's a huge deal for our kids," said Matich, whose team returns 18 starters and is the clear front-runner in Region 10.

On the other hand, Wasatch struggled last year to a disappointing 2-9 record, but — like arch-rival Park City — brings back a ton of experience and is expected to turn things around this fall. Accordingly, when you consider that Union only has one starter back on offense and just three on defense, it stands to reason that Park City and Wasatch will probably fight it out for the Region 10 crown.

"When I look at our region, Park City and Wasatch are above us three (Union, Carbon and ALA). That's how I see it," said Union coach Sam Elliott. "Us three will be competing for the (two) playoff spots. We'll go battle against Wasatch and Park City. We'll go out there and give it our all, but they'll be tough games to win."