Hillstead 'pretty good,' defense great in Skyridge's first 6A title win over Corner Canyon

SALT LAKE CITY — McCae Hillstead woke up Friday morning feeling under the weather.

He wasn't sick, but the Skyridge senior had a sharp pain in his ankle, the one that he had surgery to repair an injury suffered midway through the 2022 campaign, his last with the Falcons.

Head coach Jon Lehman even started making a few early plans around his injury, thinking his starting signal caller might not be able to play. But the Utah State-bound quarterback stopped his coach.

"I'm playing," he said, as recalled by Lehman. "I just wanted you guys to know I don't feel very good.

"So there was very little run game with him," his coach added, "because he's hurt."

Hillstead didn't have to do much, but he did complete 19-of-28 passes for 182 yards and two touchdowns, and the Falcons' defense did the rest in a 17-7 win over top-seeded Corner Canyon at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Tate Walker ran for 39 yards on 20 carries, La'akea Kalama caught 10 passes for 71 yards, and Kyle Valdez added three catches for 49 yards and a touchdown for Skyridge (13-1), who avenged an earlier loss to the Chargers for their first state title in school history.

But two months after flying to Alabama to have surgery to repair an injured ankle, Hillstead was the offensive star of a game that was all about defense. He accounted for 218 of the Falcons' 322 yards, and guided an offense that went 6-of-13 on third downs, totaled over 24 minutes time of possession, and converted the only two red-zone opportunities of the game.

"I always go 100%, no matter what. So when I was given the option to go to Alabama to have the surgery, I knew I had to do it," said Hillstead, who graded his performance as "pretty good."

"When we go out on the field, we do our best. And we know our defense is going to do the exact same thing. That's what makes the Yin and Yang."

The rest was up to the defense, led by Dalton Young's 11 tackles and 1.5 tackles for loss and 10 more stops by Saxon Higbee.

"Coming into this game, we wanted to be the more physical team and the more disciplined team," said Smith Snowden, the four-star cornerback by 247Sports with offers from Colorado, Northwestern, BYU and Utah, among others who had three tackles and a late-game interception to seal the win. "That was always our game plan coming in here.

"I haven't been to a championship since fourth grade, and I lost it then. This is my first championship ever, and it felt so good. The last two seasons, we kept losing to Lone Peak in the semifinals, and we knew this was our year."

The 7 points allowed are the fewest scored by Corner Canyon against an in-state opponent since a 10-7 loss to American Fork in 2015. Before that, Chargers coach Eric Kjar had only coached one other team to fewer points, that being 6 in a loss to California's Cathedral Catholic in 2013 when he was at Jordan.

"When you're playing Corner Canyon, you don't think 40 points is going to be enough," Lehman said. "We gave up 7 on the first drive of the game, and we were able to play some really good defense from that point on."

Back in the championship game for the first time since 2018, Skyridge wasted no time opening the scoring with its first possession, driving 75 yards on nine plays capped by Hillstead's 32-yard touchdown that spliced three defenders to Valdez that put the Falcons up 7-0.

Corner Canyon quarterback Isaac Wilson returned serve with a 25-yard score to Tate Kjar as the two powers remained deadlocked after one quarter.

But Skyridge's defense held the rest of the way, with Wilson's legs accounting for 110 of the Chargers' 262 yards of offense. The four-star recruit also took two sacks among Skyridge's seven tackles for loss, and Corner Canyon converted just 4-of-12 third downs.

The last time Corner Canyon played Skyridge, Wilson threw for 150 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions in a 21-17 win. That led the Chargers to run the ball more in Friday's finale, mostly through 1,000-yard rusher Drew Patterson but also with Wilson's dual-threat ability. Wilson ran for a game-high 74 yards before the break, and Patterson added 23 yards on six carries for the Chargers.

But that strategy also helped the Falcons slow down the game, including during a 16-yard, 69 play drive that took 7:28 off the clock in the second quarter before Ian Keeslar's 23-yard field goal gave Skyridge a 10-7 halftime lead.

"There are a lot of heroes in this game, but you can't overlook Sione Westover," Lehman said of the senior linebacker who totaled seven tackles and half a sack. "He sprained his MCL on the first drive of the game, and we were ready to shut him down. But he said no, and he played the last three quarters with a brace. It was unbelievably gutsy. It's just the heart of something like that.

"Defense is about 11-man football; all 11 guys have to be on the same page. This defense has been a good defense all year, but they work really hard, they prepare like crazy, and they're super smart with six 4.0 GPAs across the 11-man front. They're all geniuses, they all work really hard; it's a total package for some of these guys."

After a scoreless third quarter that featured back-to-back turnovers on downs, Skyridge opened the fourth with Hillstead's 11-yard TD strike to Jace Doman to give the Falcons a 17-7 advantage with 11:08 remaining.

It's not often that a 10-point deficit feels insurmountable. But it may have been against the Falcons, who held the Chargers to 262 total yards of offense, including 80 on the ground, and an imperfect 0-for-4 on fourth down.

Wilson finished with 184 yards and a touchdown through the air, and 100 yards on 16 carries, in addition to his two sacks. Quinn Hale caught eight passes for 63 yards, and Patterson added 38 yards on 13 carries on the ground for the Chargers (11-3).

BYU commit Owen Borg led Corner Canyon's defense with 14 tackles and half a sack, and Ruben Otuafi added 10 tackles for the Chargers.

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