High school football: Maple Mountain overcomes mistakes to beat Spanish Fork

Maple Mountain sludged its way to a 35-27 victory in a rivalry matchup on the road against Spanish Fork Friday night. The Golden Eagles pushed past mistakes in the early going to ultimately top the Dons.

Maple Mountain head coach Kalin Hall felt his team did not play its cleanest game, but he was pleased with the end result.

“For an underdog and a team that’s a little under matched, I think we came out and played pretty good,” the second year coach said. “It wasn’t our best football. We had too many mistakes. Time management wasn’t very good on our behalf; turnovers (weren’t) good. Execution wasn’t good.

“We didn’t play our best football. We didn’t play smart football. There’s a lot of things that we didn’t do right, but we won the game in spite of all of those little details, so with that being said, you take a victory when you don’t play … even close to your best anytime you can.”

Maple Mountain overcame a rocky start and sloppy finish to earn its second win of the young season. The Golden Eagles’ first possession resulted in a fumble and ended with a Spanish Fork defensive score.

Later, another Maple Mountain fumble gifted the Dons tremendous field position that ultimately turned into Spanish Fork’s only offensive touchdown of the first half.

“We had some lapses,” Hall said. “We were slow. We were late to the game. We weren’t getting off the ball. Our kids were a little lethargic, but ultimately, we really just persevered through some difficulties that we caused ourselves.”

Still, the ending score did not tell the full story of a game that the Golden Eagles controlled and led by double digits for much of the evening.

Once Maple Mountain quit stumbling, it picked up steam. After their initial turnover, the Golden Eagles were dominant, scoring touchdowns on three consecutive possessions.

Maple Mountain continued to control the game in the second half, evaporating the clock on a pair of touchdown drives that each took over seven minutes and left little time for Spanish Fork to come back.

“That’s who we are,” Hall said. “We’re a ground and pound football team. That’s what we should do every time we get on the field if we execute the way we should execute. That’s the identity that we have — a bunch of overachieving, tough kids that work really hard, that stick to the meticulous details, and that’s what we did on those drives.”

The game wasn’t over yet though, as the Dons scored two touchdowns in the final minutes to get within one score of their rivals, but the Golden Eagles held on to the ball from there, wasting the remaining time to close the evening on top.

Maple Mountain will look to stay unbeaten when it returns home next week to welcome Silverado from Las Vegas. Spanish Fork will remain home for its next matchup as well, facing Sky View.

The two games are scheduled for Friday at 7 p.m.