The Hawks may have been the top-ranked team and defending 5A football champions coming into its quarterfinal game against upset-minded Davis, but Alta had played more like a bottom feeder during its 21-20 win over the Darts.
Four turnovers, the result of a stubborn Darts defensive line and opportunistic secondary, had the Hawks down 13 going into the halftime locker room.
However, Alta's class eventually surfaced and settled the matter in the second half.
"Our seniors, we didn't want this to be our final game," said a relieved Ammon Olsen, who acknowledged that he tried to force his throws into the Davis secondary.
The Alta quarterback was intercepted three times and fumbled another ball away in a first half that saw the Darts (7-5) jump out to a 20-7 halftime lead. Davis entered the game with the stingiest defense among all 5A schools.
Alta (11-1), which scored the winning touchdown with 7 minutes, 27 seconds remaining to play, knew it was in a dog fight. On a fourth-and-1 from the Davis 4-yard line, Olsen connected with Drake Eckholdt in the left corner of the end zone.
"Davis, the way they played in the first half, you've got to give them credit," Alta coach Les Hamilton said. "Their defense was as good as everybody said it was.
"Our second-half defense was phenomenal; big play after big play."
Davis had only one possession following Alta's go-ahead touchdown, eventually punting away the ball with 5:20 to play. The Hawks took over on their own 14 and put together a clock-eating drive that saw them drive to the Darts 19 before Olsen took a knee three times to run out the clock.
"We came darn close," said Davis quarterback Gavin Fowler, battling the emotions of losing a tough, hard-hitting game. "We were very excited, happy [at halftime]. We knew we had to raise the bar even more."
Fowler and the rest of the Darts' offense had few answers in the second 24 minutes. Fowler wound up completing 12 of 22 passes for 134 yards and two scores. His second, to Tanner Hinds with little more than four seconds to play in the first half looked like a back-breaker. Hinds, who gained 60 yards on the ground, spent most of the game crashing heads with Alta's linebackers
Alta's cause wasn't helped when Olsen, who was 15 of 20 for 236 yards, threw his fourth interception to open the second half. The Hawks finally broke through when Olsen scrambled into the end zone with 1:43 to play in the third.
From that point, Davis had just two possessions the rest of the game.
"Ammon's a great kid," Hamilton said. "He's good enough to sweep [bad] things under the rug."
