Eight Miners basketball games played, Eight Miners basketball games won in two-day home openers

Miners girls basketball's winning game against Kamas's South Summit Team. Photo: TownLift // Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah — From freshman all the way up to varsity, girls and boys Park City High School Miners basketball teams won their home opener games on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

The girls played neighboring town Kamas’s South Summit High School. Basketball is the sport in which those two school play each other most often.

Terry Tyson, who also works at PCHS as a support professional, led the varsity girls to a 45 to 35 final score in this, his first year in the role of head coach after several previous seasons in the position of assistant coach.

“The girls played great tonight, it’s always fun at the home opener for our student-athletes to get a win,” Principal Caleb Fine told TownLift on the sidelines. “Coach Terry’s doing such a wonderful job, and the girls are in an extremely positive spirit, so it’s nice to watch them playing well.”

The boys’ Miners head coach, David “Vito” Wentworth, who was in attendance at the girls game night too, had led his team the prior night to an 85 – 56 win over Ben Lomond High, from the Ogden area.

Among the group of boys basketball players in attendance cheering on the girls was senior Luke Rice who had scored an outstanding 35 points the night before.

“Last night’s game was a great, team effort,” Rice told TownLift, even though the question was targeted towards his personal stellar shooting. “I think we just need to keep stacking good days on good days and looking forward to the next one.”

This is his fourth year on the team — he’d played football for a year before he and his family moved when he was a freshman to Park City from Oklahoma. When congratulations were expressed to Rice, he replied, “Yes Ma’am.”

Miners Athletic Director Jamie Sheetz was also there to watch the games, which were not only the home openers but the season openers too. Talk turned to winter sports in general. “You’re never gonna beat the mountains in terms of building rosters, that’s why everybody lives here, right? That’s why we all live here, it’s an integral part of this community and anybody who tries to fight that is going to be fighting a losing battle. We’ve had one or two winter sport coaches in the past that may have tried to recruit otherwise, and I’ve always explained to them to embrace the town trends, understand it, try to put a couple parameters or guidelines around it but if kids want to ski, they’re going to ski, if kids want to snowboard, they’re going to snowboard.”

He described his philosophy of how being out on the hills and out in the fresh air with their friends and family as much as indoors participating in school sports is healthy cross-training and helps develop well-rounded students rather than merely athletes.