Barkley Christensen looks back on exciting San Juan High School football season

by Barkley Christensen
San Juan High School Football Head Coach
The 2024 football season will always be one to remember. This season, our program was able to make history and win its fourth consecutive state championship.
It was a cold, chilly night in Cedar City, but our boys came to play and executed our game plan to perfection, launching us to a 60-14 victory over the Emery Spartans.
The 20 players we graduate this year have capped off their senior seasons with a clean sweep of football state titles winning all four years they were in the program.
Although the season ended exactly how we wanted it to, there were still some challenges and adversity we had to overcome. I am so proud of our players, coaching staff, booster moms, school, and community for coming together and working hard to earn this end result.
Heading into the season, our program was riding a 37-game winning streak and coming off our 3rd consecutive state championship. We had graduated a class of 20 seniors and had to fill nine positions on offense and seven on defense.
The pressure to win a fourth title was high, and we had a relatively inexperienced group to work with. Layton Christian chose not to renew our week-one game so we had to go searching for a new opponent to start the year off with.
We found a 3A opponent who needed a game in the Grantsville Cowboys. We knew Grantsville was tough but our thinking was “Win or lose, they are a good team who will make us better.”
Heading into the summer, all the talk about us was “The Streak”. Again, we had a 37-game winning streak at that point which was the third-longest streak in state history.
The record for the longest winning streak is held between state powerhouse Corner Canyon and Duchesne at 48 games. It meant that if we went undefeated in the regular season and won our first playoff game, we would be the sole owners of the longest streak in state history.
After scheduling Grantsville, we still needed a week ten game because our region only has five teams and our bye week was the last week of the season. I searched 4A and 5A teams with byes that week and we ended up scheduling the 4A Hurricane Tigers to complete our schedule.
Now that we had a full schedule, it was time to get ready for the season. All summer long the boys would wake up at 6:30 in the morning in the months of June and July and come to the school to lift, practice, and prepare for the season.
We sat the boys down and asked them to state their goals for the year. The answer from all of them was a simple “TAKE STATE”.
There was no mention of the winning streak or anything else. Our end goal and why we work so hard is to win another state championship. The players coined the motto: “Never Satisfied” to remind them to stay hungry all year in pursuit of another title.
Week one rolled around and we made the long trip to Grantsville. With a new team and a lot of unknowns we kicked off our season against the Cowboys.
It was an absolute battle and our boys fought and fought to stay in it, but at the end of the game, we lost 36-30. It was the first time this group of kids had ever experienced a varsity loss.
It had been three years since any of us had tasted defeat. The boys were pretty torn up about the loss and the streak ending. When I spoke to the team after the game, I told them how proud I was of them.
I told them if they fought like that all season in every game, we would accomplish our goal of being state champs. I am a firm believer that iron sharpens iron, and that game made us better for the rest of the season.
We lost Jake Ivins that week to injury and our opponent did not get any easier. We had another 3A team coming to town in the Juan Diego Eagles.
With Jake out, we had to have some guys step up and play bigger roles to help us win this game. In a rain shortened game, our guys rose to the occasion and we came out on top 33-14.
Week three we traveled to 1A powerhouse Kanab, and took care of business, beating the Cowboys 49-14. Weeks 4 and 5 were smooth sailing as well as our guys began to roll, beating Summit Academy 48-6 and Judge Memorial 53-7.
We began region play in week six and our first region opponent was the Emery Spartans. The RPI had just come out and it had Emery as the #1 team and us as #2.
The game started slow as Emery took a 7-0 lead. After Jagger Nieves returned the ensuing kick, we tied it 7-7. We traded possessions, and eventually found ourselves down 14-7.
We challenged our kids to rise to the occasion and keep that same fight they had shown all year. Our kids responded in a big way to rattle off 54 straight points, propelling us to a 61-20 victory and flipping the RPI to give us the #1 seed and Emery #2.
Weeks 7-9 our kids caught fire and we beat South Sevier 71-7, Grand 59-6, and Delta 63-10. Then week ten rolled around, meaning we would travel to 4A Hurricane. We knew it was going to be a battle, but we had scheduled the game hoping it would help us prepare for the postseason.
The game was what we expected it to be; it was a dog fight. We went into halftime up 14-13 and came out in the second half and scored on our first possession to take a 21-13 lead.
Hurricane converted on a big third down and a fourth down to score. We came out and threw a pick-six to put them up 25-21 going into the fourth quarter.
We made some huge mistakes in the fourth quarter and ended up losing a heartbreaker 32-28. We took a lot from that game and entered postseason practices with a new practice theme: Compete!
We knew we had to ramp up the competition in practice to be successful in the playoffs. Our guys responded well to this. Shout-out to our scout team for always making the starters better through intense practices.
We entered the playoffs as the #1 seed and played Judge Memorial in the quarterfinal round at home. We won 60-12 to punch our ticket to the semifinal round against the Delta Rabbits.
We traveled to Zions Bank Stadium in Herriman and beat Delta 54-14, putting us back in the state championship game for the fourth time in a row.
Emery beat Summit Academy in the other semifinal game, setting up a rematch with the Spartans as we tried to win our fourth straight title.
The game in Cedar City was in the low 30s but it felt like the low 20s. Our boys didn’t let the weather impact their game at all. Our goal was to start off as hot as possible and jump on them.
We knew Emery liked to throw and they were really good route runners vs zone defenses. We came up with the strategy to have our defensive backs play man-to-man all game, send pressure with our linebackers, and make them try to beat us one-on-one.
This strategy is asking a lot of the DBs because it’s asking them to cover their guy one-on-one for the entire game. The plan worked, as Emery was only able to score 14 points.
Because we were able to man-up the whole game, we sent blitz pressure at them which resulted in them only having 12 yards rushing. Our offensive plan was to start fast and play fast. We did just that, scoring 60 points in the game.
It was so awesome to see these kids’ hard work pay off once again. I hope they can see just how special and rare it is to win a state championship in the same sport every year of their high school career.
None of this would be possible without a supporting staff, school, community, and of course the booster moms who make us meals.
The San Juan Football program is not just the players and coaches. So many more are a part of our team who help us, support us, encourage us, and broadcast/cover us the whole season. Thanks to all of those involved in our program and help make it one of the best in the state.
The kids are excited and celebrating their fourth straight state title, but they are also looking to the future and already working hard to make five in a row a reality. We will see you next year! #GoBroncos