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Weber High football’s state semifinal run, recent success nearly a decade in the making

By Patrick Carr - | Nov 10, 2021

BRIAN WOLFER, Special to the Standard-Examiner

Weber High receiver Jett Hill turns upfield with the ball against Layton during a 6A second-round playoff game Friday, Oct. 29, 2021, at Weber High School in Pleasant View.

PLEASANT VIEW — In December 2012, Weber High introduced a new head football coach, the school’s fourth different one since Kory Bosgieter’s last season in 2002.

This new coach’s name was Matt Hammer, who was the offensive coordinator at Weber State. He came to Weber High a couple weeks after the Wildcats’ 2-9 season in 2012.

Weber was in the midst of a 23-game winless streak by the time it suited up to play West in the 2013 season opener.

A state semifinal appearance at Rice-Eccles Stadium? It couldn’t have been seen as more than a pipe dream at the time.

“It’s crazy,” current Weber head coach Jayson Anderson said Monday in his office. “I’m super proud of our guys, our kids, our coaches have done a great job getting us this opportunity.”

Weber beat Layton 35-21 and Syracuse 14-7 in this year’s postseason to advance to the school’s first state semifinal since 1999.

No. 4 Weber (10-2) will face the vaunted No. 1 seed Corner Canyon (11-1) at 2:30 p.m. Friday at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

“Definitely a moment we’ve dreamed about and worked for for a long time, so it’s definitely we’re super happy about, but you know, not content,” senior Logan Payne said.

This year’s semifinal appearance wasn’t 22 years in the making, rather it was about nine when Hammer first began the slow build at WHS.

That slow build didn’t look like it was going to build at all early on. Weber was 15-25 the first four seasons under Hammer from 2013-16, which was better than 10-29 mark from 2009-12.

Hammer would go to North Ogden little league football practices and little league games to build relationships, connections, do coaches clinics and “put more pride back into football,” Anderson said of those days.

There was also a lot of effort spent emphasizing weightlifting and the culture of the weight room. Each spring, WHS holds a powerlifting meet, which Anderson again credited to Hammer.

“Matt did a hell of a job just changing the culture and mentality of the kids. After his first year, I came and helped him. It was fun in the sense of where we kind of helped build this thing to where it is,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he wrote and mailed postcards to every little league football player in the North Ogden little league system this year, all 286 of them (technically 285 because one had the wrong address).

The question wasn’t whether Weber had the players to win games, but whether it had belief.

Its breakthrough came in 2017 with a 9-2 season and a first region title since 1996. Since then, Weber’s been the team to beat in Region 1.

POWER SHIFTS

The Warriors are 39-14 since the start of 2017, with four region titles and four playoff wins.

The 10 wins represent just the second time in school history they’ve hit double-digit victories (the other was the 1999 state title team), according to prep football historian George Felt. The current 10-game win streak is the longest in school history.

Now they face Corner Canyon, a three-time defending state champ, winners of 51 of the last 52 games and a team Anderson says doesn’t really have a weakness.

The Chargers average 48.5 points and 517 yards of offense per game behind a future Division-I quarterback and at least three future D-I receivers.

Just like how Region 1’s power has shifted to the Pleasant View bench, the power in Utah 6A football has shifted to Region 4.

Thirteen of the 16 teams in the 6A semifinals the last four years have been from Region 4.

In that sense, Weber got a break in this year’s bracket when it ended up in a quarter of the draw with No. 5 Mountain Ridge, No. 12 Syracuse and No. 13 Layton.

The Warriors still had to get the playoff monkey off their back, which they did against Layton and followed it with an emotional win against Syracuse.

“It was crazy,” Payne said.

He brought up the Syracuse game’s final drive: an 8-minute, 30-second marathon that ended in a kneel-down to run out the clock.

“To convert, what was it, I think three third downs and then the two fourth downs, that was pretty clutch and awesome to be able to move the chains like that in that situation,” Payne said.

The final drive relates to a theme of this year’s Weber team: resiliency.

After games this year, Anderson has said some version of “our guys never quit” when talking about the team.

The Warriors needed resiliency particularly in light of a region season that included two game-ending interceptions and a game-winning 50-yard field goal.

EMERGING PLAYERS

Weber has been helped along the way by the players people knew about in July (Aisea Moa, Cannon Devries, Jake Lindsay, Luke Harris, Jett Hill), but the Warriors have also been helped by emergent players.

There’s junior quarterback Aidan Carter, who came in for the injured Jake Lindsay in the Olympus game in October and has thrown for 894 yards with nine touchdowns and three interceptions.

Weber is 4-0 in the games he’s started. Carter said the team was on “cloud nine” after beating Syracuse.

“Coming in, I was the JV quarterback. I was like OK, I’ll do my role, I’ll back up Jake, I’ll be the sideline hype man and I was not expecting to come in,” Carter said.

Anderson said Carter impressed enough in the spring that the team’s detail-oriented offensive coordinator Zac Connors felt Carter was “the guy,” Anderson said.

There’s receiver Stockton Short, a senior who played goalkeeper on the Warriors’ state championship-winning boys soccer team.

This is his first year of high school football.

“A lot of football coaches recruited me, said ‘Hey we need you to come play, you gotta be a receiver,'” Short said after Weber’s 24-20 win against Layton on Sept. 21. “I had some teammates reach out to me and say, ‘Hey man, you gotta play.’ I took a shot and it’s paying off.”

He has 35 catches for 616 yards, seven touchdowns and has become a much-needed option at receiver opposite the BYU commit DeVries.

Then, there’s junior linebacker Carter Roberts: 2021 was an outlier in that the linebacker position group was brand new heading into the season.

Roberts leads the team with 77 tackles to go with two sacks and a forced fumble. He’s one of the leaders on a defense that has allowed 14.5 points per game the last six games, compared to 37 per game the first six games.

Brian Wolfer, Special to the Standard-Examiner Weber High running back Logan Payne (38) scampers for a touchdown in the first half against Bonneville on Friday, Aug. 27, 2021, at Weber High School in Pleasant View.

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