The Best Day

Yesterday, I had the incredible privilege of watching as my high school's football team took home the state championship trophy, capping off an incredible undefeated season.

 And I couldn't be any happier.


In all honesty, yesterday was one of the best days of my life. The excitement and hype lasted from when I got out of bed in the morning to when I collapsed into that same bed 19 hours later, exhausted but still exhilarated from the day's events.

So allow me here to explain exactly what made yesterday so great.

In order to understand some things, you'll need a little bit of background.

I go to Bingham High School. Bingham has a long and fairly consistent story of success and triumph in most areas, but especially in football, and especially in the past few years. Since 2006, Bingham has won the state football championship six times, including yesterday (2006, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2016), which is quite an impressive record. Last year, Bingham was expected to complete the "three-peat" and win it all for the third year in a row, but was knocked out in the semifinal by Lone Peak High School (who would go on to lose the championship game).

That loss, while very hard for the Miners to swallow, served as motivation for this season. The juniors and seniors this year knew the pain and frustration of working hard and then simply not being good enough, and they didn't want to feel that way again.

My good friend Kade Lever, who has served as our football team's starting kicker for the past few years, once told me that the loss really stuck with them. He told me that sometimes if they weren't doing as well in practice as they should've been doing, one of their coaches would say, "You guys are doing pretty good. This almost looks like a semifinalist's effort," and then they would go really hard, because they knew that they didn't want to just be semifinalists again. 

They wanted to be champions.

They wanted to leave no doubt that they were the ones that deserved to lift the trophy at the end of the year.

And so started the Revenge Tour, Bingham's quest to once again be the best football team in the state and erase the pain of last year's failure.

It was quite a journey. For the past 14 weeks, I watched as my Miners played some great football, beating each team along the way (including Lone Peak and the defending state champs, Herriman High School) by generally outrageous margins. It was a blast. When the postseason started, I got incredibly pumped. I knew that this was it. This was my last high school football season, and we were going to go all the way.

Last week, I stood on the field at Rice-Eccles Stadium after we won our game, and I felt it. I felt the excitement of the thought that we were going to the championship game. And that feeling only grew over the last seven days.

So yesterday, I woke up. I got ready, and I went to school. We had a pep rally before school, and it was really cool to feel my excitement amplified through hundreds of other kids. I went to a couple of my classes (and didn't go to a couple others) and after what was definitely too long of a wait, I was at Rice-Eccles again, ready to watch the championship game.

I consider myself to be a fairly lucky person, and my luck extended yesterday. Because I am a writer and photographer for my school newspaper, I was given a media pass that allowed me to get on the field for the championship game. Although I would have liked to party in the student section, it was truly an amazing opportunity to watch the championship game from field-level. I also got some cool pictures (many of which I will be sharing here).

Bingham's coach, John Lambourne



The best part about this game is the fact that we were playing Lone Peak High School. The Revenge Tour was going to end exactly how it started: against Lone Peak at Rice-Eccles Stadium. In the weirdest sort of poetic justice, we had the chance to avenge ourselves in the best way. However, Lone Peak had their own sort of revenge to achieve. Not only had we beaten them in the regular season this year, but they had played in last year's championship and lost. They didn't want to repeat that story anymore than we wanted to repeat our loss to them.

And so, the game started, with every person hoping that their side would be the one to lift the trophy at the end, knowing that someone was destined to be disappointed.

My excitement was still high, but the game did not start out in the best way for us. We made some errors and were getting stopped on each drive. We were suddenly down 10-0, and I am almost embarrassed to admit that I momentarily feared that history was doomed to repeat itself for us.

But destiny had a different storyline in mind. With only minutes remaining in the first half, we got a large gain on a beautiful overhead pass, and you could feel the momentum shifting to our favor. On the next play, we scored a touchdown, and went into halftime only down three points and confident that we could get those points easily. This was our game to win, and we were ready for it.








So we came out for the second half, ready to play. We got a touchdown, and then a field goal, and we were up 17-10 with only one more quarter until we got the prize we were looking for all season. After a few relieving interceptions which Lone Peak threw, a (questionable) pass interference call (again against Lone Peak), and several minutes of agonizing uncertainty, it was finally ours.

The clock ran to zero, and the Bingham Miners were state champions again. 






And there it is. The finish to my last high school football season was absolutely perfect. An undefeated season, decorated with a perfect revenge in the form of a championship trophy.

It was so beautiful.

I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to attend Bingham High School, and so happy that I get to make so many amazing memories with my fellow Miners. I am blessed to be the president of the greatest senior class ever, and I can't wait to see where the rest of my senior year takes me. Whether there are more championship trophies involved or not, I will know one thing for certain:


The life I have been given makes me a winner by default. And I am so grateful for that.




 











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