| Josh Critchlow and Tyler Bean team up to pulls down a Moab ball carrier. While Friday’s homecoming game showed improvements. |
Homecoming always brings out high emotions and the Friday night game at Carbon High was more of the same. Even though the score was identical to the previous week, the game was anything but the same.
Losing for the second week in a row, 57-0 to 2A Grand, Carbon showed signs of life. The team moved the ball and forced several turnovers to stop a tough Moab squad from dominating.
Grand is sitting in second place in the strong 2A North region. They rank well ahead of the American Legion Academy that beat Carbon by one point early in the season. As they prepared to face Grand, Carbon knew it would be another tough match up.
The Dinos started out well. They forced Grand to turnover the ball early and then drove down the field. Even though they failed to score, the play was a momentum builder. Holding Grand to only one score in the first quarter was big for a team that had been giving up 20 or more quick points in previous games.
Unfortunately, a couple of turnovers, critical penalties and a few bad snaps let Grand put 20 on the board in the second quarter. Carbon went to the locker room trailing 27-0. Grand wasn’t taking the game lightly and the yelling that came out of their locker room during the break was evident that they weren’t going to let up.
The Carbon squad came out fired up after the half time festivities. But after Grand put another one on the board, most of the fight went out of the squad. There were a few pushes to get at least one score up for Carbon, but each one sputtered and the will to fight began to fade.
Coach Salisbury summed it up by saying, “They played well until they felt the game was out of reach.”
He worried that each loss was really taking a cumulative toll on the players.
“We gave them hope and build them up and when the success didn’t materialize they were crushed,” he said. The coaching staff will just have to try and make some sense of it and regroup again to be ready for the next game.
Carbon will move on to Juan Diego next Friday night. They will play at home on Oct. 11 against Hurricane.