LCA, Herriman Show Well at Puriri Tournament

02.24.2025HS Boys

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Your big winners coming out of the Puriri Tournament seem to be Herriman and Layton Christian Academy.

Those two teams are certainly two of the major state contenders this year, along with defending state champs East HS. While East faltered a little, it's important to remember that the Puriri Tournament, while competitive, is still a warmup tournament.

Herriman beat Red Mountain 54-12, leading comfortably at halftime before ringing the changes. They followed that up with a 53-10 win over Tribal, playing a less experienced group, and then beat the Caveman out of American Fork 25-7.

"Not too bad for our first run out," said Herriman Coach Jeff Wilson. MacRae Parker and Ryker Syddall started well for Herriman and the junior flanker pairing of Cannon Brinton and Jaden Mangelson showed a high work rate.

"They're like we're playing with 17 guys because you swear there's two of each of them out there," said Wilson. "They are all-effort guys who like to hit."

Junior prop Timote Kinikini showed a nice turn of pace and mobility and set up several tries in open play.

LCA ran out two sides, with their 2nds beating Tribal and also Brighton by two, and losing to Olympus by three. Their 1st side encountered slightly different fortunes.

They blew past Kahuku 54-5 on Friday and then beat East 34-5.

Head Coach Tongia Vaitaki seemed somewhat surprised, maybe because he returns just a small number of players from the team that took 5th at HS Nationals last year.

"We have a challenging year [coming up]," Vaitaki told GRR. "It's almost like we're rebuilding this year. I lost tons of seniors last season."

They do have players moving up from the JV side, but Vaitaki said there's work to do, and this past weekend was the weekend to get some of that work done.

"We need more of our rugby IQ to improve, especially when we travel to play teams away from Utah, discipline and strong mentality," he said. "The Puriri tournament is always perfect for us so we know what to work on and prepare for the season. But when the season kicks off we will adjust what we have and just play rugby and try to finish strong in our season here in Utah then we look at what is ahead of us after."

Both Herriman and LCA look diligently for competition outside of Utah, and certainly the HS National Championships is part of all of that. Both teams went 2-1 last year; Herriman finished 3rd as a single-school, and LCA 5th as a HS club. Herriman's loss was only 18-10. LCA lost their opener in overtime.

LCA, Herriman Show Well at Puriri Tournament

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