The Miners football team traveled down to the Salt Lake Valley on Friday night for their season opening game.
There, Park City took on Sky View, whose season they ended last fall in the playoffs.
With both teams graduating over 20 seniors from last season’s teams, Friday’s game was sure to have a different feel.
Rather than a relatively high scoring clash featuring multiple first half scores, Friday’s game didn’t feature much action until the second half.
Miners running back Ethan Cunningham found the endzone on a 10 yard rush with just under two minutes to go in the third quarter. Sky View answered Cunningham’s touchdown with a passing one of their own a few minutes into the fourth quarter. On Park City’s final drive of regulation, with the game tied at seven, they had a chance to win the game but made a tactical error.
“I made the decision to run out the field goal team (on fourth down),” said first-year Miners Head Coach Dennis Cunningham. “Then I’m looking at it going, ‘That’s the wrong call.’ So we ran the offense back out to go for it. … We had the right play call and everything set up, we just didn’t execute. That’s really on me because I didn’t give them enough time to get set and really get their head around things.”
Miners’ kicker Tyler Curran knocked in a 35 yard field goal to begin overtime. Sky View responded however with a 6six yard touchdown rush to win the game 13-10.
“Our defense had played really well, but we didn’t (go for a touchdown in overtime) because we were down a bunch of guys on injuries,” Dennis said. “But if we would have had everybody, we’d have thought about it for sure.”
Park City got in the weight room Saturday and Monday mornings as they’re working to recover from Friday’s game. Cunningham is hopeful most of the players who got dinged up Friday will be ready for this week’s game.
The Miners will take on defending 4A state champions Ridgeline on the road at 7 p.m. this Friday. Park City lost to Ridgeline in dominant fashion twice last season, including once in the playoffs.
“(On Monday there was) great energy in the room,” Dennis said. “Nobody was down in the dumps. … I love the opportunity to go play those guys. You get a chance to see who you are, who they are and measure yourself against the best.”
Dennis believes win or lose, the Miners will have a good idea of where they need to improve this Friday. He said he’d rather find that out than dominate a lesser team.
The head ball coach said to keep an eye out for his defensive lineman, linebackers, defensive backs and offensive lineman this Friday. He said they all played well in the loss to Sky View.
After this Friday’s game, Park City will play their home opener of sorts next Friday against Morgan at South Summit High School. South Summit is allowing the Miners to use their stadium for the game while Dozier Field is experiencing construction delays.
For further information about Park City, including their complete schedule for the season, see their MaxPreps page: maxpreps.com/ut/park-city/park-city-miners/football.