Draper • Students, officials and fans of the Corner Canyon Chargers football team searched for all kinds of reasons why their team was on the brink of its first loss in four years.
It was the late in the third quarter and the Chargers trailed by 17 points. A school official said all the team needed was a stop and a score before he would start to worry. Early in the fourth quarter, one of the team’s water girls discovered that her pink tu-tu skirt was on backwards, and joked that maybe that’s why the Chargers were losing.
As the fourth quarter reached the midpoint, the Lone Peak student section on the other side of the field got progressively braver with their chants despite the Knights being the road team. “Overrated.” “End the streak.” “Why so quiet?” “Who’s your daddy?” “This is our house.”
The Chargers had been Supermen for the last four years. They were on the brink of taking sole possession of the state record for consecutive wins.
Little did they know that their kryptonite was waiting in the wings in the form of the 2021 iteration of the Lone Peak.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lone Peak's quarterback Easton Comer with the keeper. Lone Peak high School ends Corner Canyon's 48-game winning streak with the Knights' 41-16 win over the Chargers, Oct. 7, 2021.
The Knights ended Corner Canyon’s 48-game winning streak Thursday night with a 41-16 victory on the road. It’s the first loss for the Chargers since Nov. 9, 2017, in a playoff game against Skyridge.
“It means the world to us, honestly,” Knights senior wide receiver Lucas Jaakir Hyde said of ending Corner Canyon’s streak.
Lone Peak improved to 5-2 on the season, while Corner Canyon fell to 8-1. The Knights were coming off a frustrating loss to Skyridge the week before in a performance that coach Bart Brockbank said lacked execution.
While Brockbank said the team itself didn’t talk about the streak heading into Thursday’s game, he did acknowledge that breaking it was important to the student body as a whole.
Knights senior quarterback Easton Comer said the streak wasn’t at the front of the players’ minds because they just wanted to bounce back after losing to Skyridge. He added that the message from the coaches was to play loose because they had nothing to lose.
“Everyone expects us to lose,” Comer said. “We’re out there playing loose, just trying to do our thing. That was the most important thing. It wasn’t about the streak. It was just about us.”
It wasn’t necessarily about the streak for the Chargers, either. Coach Eric Kjar has maintained for the past three weeks that the coaching staff hasn’t mentioned it at all, and that it was more important to the media and others outside the football program.
“It’s never been about the streak for me,” Kjar said. “It’s a number. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Corner Canyon senior wide receiver Cody Hagen said last week that breaking the record would’ve been good for Kjar because he feels the coach is deserving of that accolade.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lone Peak's head coach Bart Brockbank, left, and Corner Canyon's head coach Eric Kjar after the game. Lone Peak high School ends Corner Canyon's 48-game winning streak with the Knights' 41-16 win over the Chargers, Oct. 7, 2021.
But the streak is over, and the Knights ended it with a complete performance. A diversified offense on one end, a physically imposing defense on the other.
“They just outplayed us,” Kjar said. “They played better, they were more physical, we didn’t execute as good, they beat us up front on both sides. They just played a way better game. We just got dominated.”
Corner Canyon will still be heavily favored to win its fourth consecutive state championship later this fall. As the clock wound down, one Chargers player on the sideline was reminding a teammate that a state title is still the goal for the year.
For one night, at least, Lone Peak reveled in beating a Chargers team that seemed unbeatable. The student section rushed the field after the game. Knights players took photos. An SUV full of Lone Peak fans drove through the Corner Canyon parking lot blasting “We Are The Champions” by Queen.
Hyde said he normally doesn’t listen to the student section during games. But in the fourth quarter of Thursday’s, he took them in and thought to himself, “Shoot, this feels so nice. We’re about to break that streak.”
