Broncos win region title, show no signs of slowing as they prep to close regular season in Hurricane

by Rhett Sifford
Sports Editor
The San Juan High School football team won the 2A South Region Championship this past Friday, October 11 with a convincing 63-10 drubbing of the Delta Rabbits on Senior Night in Blanding.
The Broncos concluded region play with a perfect 4-0 record, taking their fourth straight region title. They outscored their region opponents by an average of 53 points per game.
Indeed, that has been the trend for the entire season, and most of the points scored against the Broncos have come late in games when the starting defense was retired for the night.
As they have all year San Juan established an early lead this past Friday night and continued to pour on points, crushing their opponents before they really had a chance to disembark their bus.
The Broncos scored three touchdowns in the first quarter and two more in the second. With successful Tripp Palmer extra points on all five TDs they were up 35-0 midway through the second quarter – enough of a lead to earn a running clock to start the second half.
But the Rabbits answered with a touchdown of their own when wide receiver Connor Pruit got behind the San Juan secondary and quarterback Hunt Robinson hit him for a 67-yard pass with 5:14 left in the half.
Anyone who has observed the Broncos this season knows it doesn’t take much time for them to score a touchdown. Many times it’s only one play.
So it was no surprise when quarterback Jaiten Knight took matters into his own hands and scampered into the endzone from ten yards out to reestablish their 35-point lead less than two minutes later.
This time it held up and San Juan took a 42-7 lead into halftime. The starting offense played one series in the second half and, also not surprisingly, scored another touchdown to increase their lead to 49-7 before the junior varsity came onto the field to close out the game.
In an interesting occurrence, a penalty during the point-after try on San Juan’s final touchdown forced Tripp Palmer to ultimately kick from the 15 yard line, resulting in a 25-yard point-after kick, which he made.
Delta then proceeded to drive down the field on the Bronco JV defense, but the drive stalled on the San Juan seven. The Rabbits rolled out the field goal team to attempt a kick from…the San Juan 15.
Delta senior Patrick Harrison nailed the kick with ease, so both kickers hit exactly 25-yard field goals within minutes of each other. One was only worth one point and the other was worth three.
While we’re on the subject, we’ll continue to talk about Tripp Palmer. He has been Mr. Consistency for the Broncos this season and was a perfect 8-for-8 on PATs against Delta, including the 25-yarder. He’s now tied for first in the state with 44 made point-after kicks.
Jagger Nieves had another off-the-hook night against Delta also, adding another five touchdowns to his collection. This time he kept it fairly traditional with three rushing TDs and two receiving. That’s 30 of the Broncos’ 63 total points if you’re counting.
Nieves rushed for 108 yards on the night and caught three passes for 47 yards. Jake Ivins led receivers with 136 yards, but he never got into the endzone. Owen Adams caught one touchdown pass, as did Branten Bethea.
Jaiten Knight threw for 333 yards and four touchdowns in the win. He was 20-for-26 for a 77 percent completion rate. On the season he has now passed for 2,347 yards (an average of 261 per game), 27 touchdowns, and is completing a very impressive 70 percent of his pass attempts.
Nieves led the defense with nine tackles, Ivins had seven, and Nache Young and Tyrian Lee collected five apiece. Ivins got a key fumble recovery early in the game when Delta was threatening to answer San Juan’s first touchdown.
Nieves and Cole Duke snagged one interception each as the Bronco “D” continues to take the ball away from their opponents. San Juan now has 12 interceptions on the year and nine fumble recoveries for 21 total takeaways. That’s an average of over two per game, and that’s winning football.
With the win over Delta the Broncos improved to 8-1 on the season. They remain the #1 team in the 2A RPI standings. This week brings the final game of the regular season and it is interesting for a couple reasons.
First, the game will be played on Wednesday, October 16, shortly after you receive this paper. And second, it will be played in Hurricane, UT where San Juan will face a team they haven’t played in 22 years.
The Hurricane Tigers lead the all-time series between the two teams six games to four going back to 1976, but the last time they met was in 2002.
This season the Tigers are 3-6 and they were ranked 18th in the 4A RPI before the standings were taken offline by the Utah High School Activities Association.
Jerry Cowan, longtime coach of the Duchesne Eagles took over the head coach position at Hurricane this season. You may have heard of Cowan.
His Duchesne squad set the state record for the longest win streak in state history at 48 games in 2014. Corner Canyon tied that mark in 2021.
Though Cowan is no longer trying to stop San Juan’s bid at breaking his record, he and the Tigers still relish the opportunity to topple the three-time defending 2A champion Broncos.
The game kicks off at 7 p.m. on Wednesday and as always you can catch all the action live on Redrock 92 Radio with video on StreamUtah.Live with the pregame beginning at 6:30.