4A championship: Ridgeline caps undefeated season with largest title-game shutout in 106 years

SALT LAKE CITY — Ever since fourth grade, Nate Dahle and Graham Livingston have dreamed of winning a state championship, including the past four seasons with Ridgeline High.

Any additional drama for the moment was taken away shortly after halftime.

Dahle accounted for seven touchdowns as top-ranked Ridgeline rolled to a 56-0 win over Green Canyon, capping an undefeated season with a region rout at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

"This is the best feeling in the world," Livingston said. "I didn't expect it to be this emotional, but it's a great feeling and so proud of all the boys for getting it done."

It might be a little weird to not see each other in college, Dahle admitted.

"We've thrown a million passes together," said Dahle, who has committed to Eastern Washington. "It's been awesome to have him be one of my guys."

He had plenty of his guys, though. Dahle completed 16-of-20 passes for 270 yards and four touchdowns, including seven for 134 yards and two scores to Livingston. He also found Noah Fiefia twice for 23 yards and a touchdown, and sent two to Brady Cook for 22 yards and another score. Hunter Knighton added four catches for 76 yards.

In the rare circumstance the passing game broke down, Dahle wasn't afraid to run it — six times for 30 yards and three touchdowns, to be exact.

"I can throw it to anyone on the field: Graham, Krew, anyone," said Dahle, whose 12,318 passing yards (with 127 touchdowns) are the most in 4A history and the most since Austin Kafentzis threw for 12,929 yards at Jordan from 2011-14. "We've got all of these guys, and they are just ballers."

Ridgeline (14-0) only had three drives in the first half, but scored on all three of them for a 20-0 start that included a 4-yard strike to Livingston with 1:04 remaining in the second quarter. That would've been enough with a defense that held Green Canyon to just 183 yards, including 3 rushing yards with six sacks, eight tackles for loss and a pair of fumble recoveries.

Matt Alles had 1.5 sacks, and Krew Jones, Landon Perkins, Coen Richards and Cooper Clark each added a sack.

But the Riverhawks weren't done. Neither was Dahle, who passes for touchdowns of 15, 55 and 9 yards after the break in addition to a 7-yard scoring run and Crosby West's 25-yard scoring run to cap the scoring with 4:04 remaining of a running clock-aided second half.

"He's the most underrated quarterback, ever," said Livingston, who has committed to play football at BYU after a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Spain. "He's amazing. You don't know the things that he can do."

The numbers are the eye-popping, and for Livingston as well, whose 313 career receptions are a state record with 4,980 receiving yards — the second-most behind former BYU star and current Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua (5,226) from 2015-19.

Dahle's 858 completions ranks second in state history, his 128 career touchdowns are third all-time behind Milford's Bryson Barnes (137) and American Fork's Maddux Madsen (130), and his 13,051 yards of total offense is fourth.

But what doesn't get seen is his leadership, and how he took a team that lost 21-14 to Spanish Fork in last year's 4A semifinals on a 14-game revenge tour with an average margin of victory of 41.9 points — including the largest championship-game shutout since East beat Payson 79-0 in the Utah High School Activities Association's first-ever state title game in 1919, according to Utah preps historian George Felt.

"The biggest strides that he made this year were in leadership. he really got the team to buy in to what we do in offseason practices, in weights, and being not only a phenomenal player but a phenomenal leader," Ridgeline coach Travis Cox said. "Whenever you have great leadership from your senior group, you typically have pretty great teams."

Ethan Munk threw for 180 yards, including 83 to Ethan Edelmayer for Green Canyon (9-6).

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