High school baseball: Snow Canyon rallies for 2 wins to claim 4A state title with huge offensive performance
Snow Canyon’s Braden Mugavero, center, lifts the 4A baseball trophy after defeating Deseret Hills to win the third game of the series and win the 4A baseball state championship at Gates Field in Kerns, on Saturday, May 16, 2026. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News After surrendering an 8-run lead and losing Game 1 of the 4A state baseball championship series Friday, the Snow Canyon Warriors rallied Saturday, winning two games over Desert Hills to claim the state title. In the decisive Game 3, a 15-5 victory, the Warriors picked up right where they left off after scoring 18 runs in Game 2 and put up six in the first inning alone.
Trey Vaughn, Talan Hansen, and Bridger Larsen all hit home runs in the top of the first. Vaughn and Larsen would both homer again in the top of the second inning. In total Saturday, Larsen tallied nine RBIs with three home runs.
“I don’t know what to say. It was just unreal,” he said. Scoring runs isn’t anything new for the Warriors, as they averaged nearly 10 runs per game this season and 13 runs per game in the playoffs.
“Every time I write that lineup, I have guys that can mash, one through nine, and a few on the bench,” Snow Canyon head coach Reed Secrist said. “It’s fun to write the lineup, and what you saw right here is something that they can do. ” This is Secrist’s sixth career state title, and Snow Canyon’s third in the last six seasons.
The Game 3 win came after the Warriors exploded for 14 runs in the sixth inning of Game 2 to force a decisive contest. Game 2 started out as a back and forth contest, as Snow Canyon struck first with a sacrifice fly in the first inning before Desert Hills answered back with two runs of its own in the bottom of the first. The game was tied before the decisive sixth inning, when the Warriors strung together multiple hits to put the 10-run mercy rule into effect.