DAVIS COUNTY — The gridiron, the hardcourts and the soccer field filled us with the early excitement of high school sports as summer turned to fall.

With the initial kickoff of Friday’s football games, the fall sports season began with a bang as three of the four south Davis County schools walked away with victories.

The Viewmont Vikings, however, had the unfortunate draw of getting the reigning 5A football champions for their opening game, suffering a loss via shutout.

Meanwhile Davis, Viewmont, Bountiful and Woods Cross all kicked off the girls soccer season that same week, having all the excitement start even before football.

The two sets of hardcourts (the gym and the tennis courts) also went for an early start, and the trends started to come alive within the following weeks.

The Darts football, soccer, volleyball and tennis teams were nearing region titles, while the Vikings, Wildcats and Braves fought for top position in their regions the entire year.

While a few things became the usual norm for all fans in the county, things also started to change before we knew it.

The Braves football team, under the long-time tutelage of Larry Wall, defeated the Wildcats for the 20th straight time; while the Vikings soccer and volleyball teams were fighting for position just to get into the 5A state playoffs.

Mid-season saw a lot of changes occur in many of the sports, however. Bountiful football was paving its road to becoming region champions, while the Darts only loss of the regular season cost them a region title.

Viewmont finished out of the cellar by crushing Clearfield and Roy in back-to-back weeks, while the Wildcats – despite their 3-0 finish in the last three regular season games – were left out of the 4A playoffs.

All four local high schools made the volleyball playoffs after tough campaigns the year before, as well as all four soccer teams (Bountiful and Woods Cross finished 2-3 in Region 6, while Davis ran away in Region 1 with the title and Viewmont was forced to play-in for a spot).

By the time playoffs rolled around for everyone else that is when the Braves’ girls tennis and Darts’ cross country teams took home state titles in their respective sports.

Meanwhile, a lot of surprises and disappointments followed for the remaining sports as the deep title runs by a few teams ended up breaking the hearts of the players, coaches and fans.

Braves football, despite putting up 35 points against Mountain Crest, fell a game short of reaching the 4A finals while the Darts soccer team was snake-bitten by three key turnovers that led to goals and a 3-0 loss to exit the 5A tourney.

Darts volleyball also fell a game short of being crowned the 5A state champs (they swept their opponent in the third place match), and the Lady Vikings soccer team were a strong candidate to capture the 5A crown from out of nowhere (according to many other news sources).

The Lady Vikes lost in double-overtime on a goal that wasn’t a goal, and were forced to settle for second place.

However, with all the teams having some success through the year and into the playoffs, the same teams should be able to make stronger, better runs for the 2011 season.