High school football: Defense comes up big for Skyridge in defeat of Lehi

It wasn’t always easy or pretty, but Skyridge found a way to defeat one of the top teams in the state in Lehi Thursday night, coming away victorious 20-16 in a strong defensive battle to hand the Pioneers their first loss of the season.

“I gotta spotlight the whole defense. The guys were flying around, and nothing came easy for us. We had a couple of critical goal line stops and found ourselves in some key fourth down situations and the guys were able to come up huge in the big moments,” said Skyridge head coach Justin Hemm.

Skyridge scored on its very first possession of the game on a 1-yard run from Zaeden Helu. It took a while but Lehi finally got on the scoreboard at the beginning of the second quarter on a 40-yard field goal by Gavin Fenn.

Lehi then briefly took a 10-7 lead with 1:13 left in the first half on a 3-yard touchdown run from quarterback Jett Niu, but Skyridge tied it up with a 38-yard field goal from Blake Hester with two seconds left before the break.

The score remained tied at 10 until just under six minutes remaining in the third quarter, when Hester made a 20-yard field goal to put Skyridge up 13-10.

Lehi had a golden opportunity to at least tie things up toward the end of the game. With eight minutes to go and the ball at the Skyridge 2 yard line, Lehi elected to go for it on fourth down instead of kicking the short field goal but the Falcons stopped them just shy of the goal line.

“We have tremendous senior leadership. We have guys that are coachable, that want a good challenge, that want to be pushed and want to be driven outside their comfort zones and it’s a credit to those boys,” Hemm said.

“We weren’t perfect and that’s where we hope to continue to clean some things up and if we can do that and put together a complete game I like our chances.”

The gamble proved costly, as Skyridge made Lehi pay on the ensuing possession, scoring on a 17-yard run by quarterback Kaneal Sweetwyne.

Lehi scored its only points of the second half on a 13-yard touchdown scramble by Niu to end the game.

“Lehi and coach (Ed) Larson do a tremendous job, and we knew the task at hand tonight,” Hemm said. “They have some tremendous kids, and we knew this was going to be a battle and a fight. It shines a lot of light on our team. It was a tremendous win and I’m very happy for our boys.”