High school football: Park City packs too much sting for Wasps

HEBER CITY — Outside of seven sloppy minutes to end the first half Thursday, Park City's quick-strike offense simply overwhelmed rival Wasatch.

The Miners scored on a 77-yard touchdown pass on the second play of the game setting the tone for a convincing 53-17 victory that clinched the Region 10 championship.

"It was our No. 1 goal," said Park City coach Brandon Matich about the league title. "Now that goal is in the past and we have another one to go get."

Park City churned out 391 rushing yards against Wasatch, led by Dylan Chynoweth's 182 yards and three touchdowns on 16 carries. It was exactly the type of victory the Miners were looking for heading into the 3A state tournament, where it seems like a shoo-in to advance to Rice-Eccles Stadium.

With as dominant as Park City was jumping out to a 25-0 lead in the opening quarter and a half, it didn't really matter that sloppy defense and costly penalties late in the second quarter allowed Wasatch to trim the lead to 25-10 by halftime.

By that point it was already pretty clear that Wasatch couldn't stop Park City's offense, which was all part of Matich's master plan.

"Coach (Steve) North likes to change defenses, he's all over the place. It becomes a chess match every time we play them, so I wanted to make sure he didn't have time to set that up and we were wanting to get down the field quickly," Matich said.

Park City did that just two plays into the game as Erik Walker connected Brian Schettler on a play-action pass that went 77 yards for a touchdown. It was the first of seven plays that covered at least 30 yards for the Miners on a dominant evening.

Following touchdown runs by Walker and Chynoweth, Walker and Schettler hooked up again extending the lead to 25-0.

Wasatch responded by capitalizing on numerous Park City penalties and finally got on the board late in the first half as Payton Davis lobbed an 8-yard TD strike to Cory Neilson. The Wasps recovered the ensuing onside kick and tacked on a Spencer Edwards' 34-yard field goal to make it 25-10 at the half.

Matich, who admits his team hasn't been a very good third quarter team this year, challenged his players at halftime to come out strong and regain the momentum.

The defense was up to the challenge forcing a quick turnover, and Chynoweth scored on a pair of TD runs in the third quarter to officially put the game out of reach at 39-10.

"Our offensive line is amazing. They get off the ball so fast and get down field into the second level and block well. I can't say enough about those front five," Matich said. "It makes Dylan's job and Erik's job that much easier, but Dylan sure ran well tonight."

Mat Christensen and Andrew Proctor added late touchdowns for Park City which finished the regular season averaging 48.9 ppg.

e-mail: jedward@desnews.com