Park City football builds new culture under coach Dennis Cunningham

Park City football is spending June and July on the small things that will matter by Aug. 14: morning lifts, conditioning work and a higher standard for who shows up and who puts in the work. With 26 seniors gone, first-year head coach Dennis Cunningham is trying to replace experience and set a new tone at the same time, and his first road game comes against Sky View, the team Park City edged 23-20 in last season’s playoffs.

Cunningham was hired in early April after a month-long search, and Park City school leaders said his priorities were a positive team culture, hard work and personal accountability. He is not new to the program. Cunningham spent four seasons as an assistant with the Miners before getting the top job, and around the school he is known as Coach G, a nickname that grew from his family name, Big G.

That background matters because Park City is not starting over from scratch. The Miners went 7-5 in 2025 and reached the 4A quarterfinals, where Ridgeline beat them 49-3 after Park City’s 23-20 playoff win over Sky View. Tanner Pidwell made three field goals in that win, a reminder that the Miners could win tight games even before the coaching change. Now Cunningham has to keep that edge while asking a younger roster to grow into larger roles.

The clearest sign of whether the reset is real will come before the first snap. Football tryouts officially open July 27 under the Utah High School Activities Association, and Park City’s opener at Sky View falls Aug. 14, the same window UHSAA marks for football Endowment Games. For Cunningham, that means the summer is not just preparation, it is evaluation. If players are in town, they are expected in the weight room. If they miss the lifts, they miss part of the standard he is building.

The timeline also sharpens the stakes for Summit County. Park City schools do not start classes for 3rd through 12th grade until Aug. 24, so the Miners will have already played a game and taken a first measure of themselves before the student body is fully back on campus. That early test comes against a familiar opponent and a familiar benchmark: Sky View, the same program Park City beat in the playoffs a year ago.

The program’s recent record gives Cunningham a foundation, with MaxPreps listing Park City at 10-2 in 2024 and 11-2 in 2023. The bigger question now is whether the Miners can turn that recent success into a durable culture under a coach who already knows the school and the expectations, and whether the next roster can carry that standard into August.