Colony quarterback gets recognition he deserves

Last year, Colony High quarterback Rob Lorentz unknowingly helped me prove a point.

Lorentz, then a junior, was the only starting quarterback in the seven-team Railbelt not named first-team all-conference.

Goofy, right? Six first-team signal callers? I wrote about the absurdity in a past edition of J’s World, and Lorentz (who played as well as at least two of those quarterbacks on the list of first-teamers) helped me illustrate my argument.

I’m not going back to beat a dead horse, as I much as I’d love to, but rather to report Lorentz finally received the recognition he deserves as one of four Colony Knights named first-team All-Railbelt Conference.

Lorentz, who now owns a handful of Colony school records, put together one of, if not the best, statistical seasons of any high school quarterback I’ve seen during my many years covering prep football in Alaska.

Let me throw some numbers at ya.

Lorentz completed 151 of 251 passes for 1,977 yards, while tossing 19 touchdowns compared to only five interceptions. He never threw for fewer than 132 yards as a senior or completed fewer than nine passes.

His nine completions for 132 yards came in a Week 1 win over Skyview, a game that was decided about 12 minutes after it started. Lorentz passed for more than 225 yards five times, and had touchdown passes in seven of his team’s eight games.

Lorentz, who was steadily climbing the state’s single-season passing yardage ladder as the season went on, firmly stamped his names in the record books with a mind-boggling 530-yard, six-touchdown effort against North Pole during the final week of the season.

His 530 yards passing marked the second-biggest night for an Alaska high school quarterback in history. Only former Soldotna quarterback Mark Wackler threw for more. Wackler finished with 542 yards passing during a loss to, ironically, Colony in 1996.

Those 530 yards easily set a school single-game mark, breaking the prior record of 316, set by Jared Boyd against West Valley in 1999. His six touchdowns against North Pole also move him into a tie with Boyd in the record books. Boyd tossed six touchdowns during a win over Homer in 1999.

Lorentz also eclipsed the school’s single-season passing record. Boyd passed for 1,930 yards in 1999. But Lorentz is Colony’s new king in that category as well.

Lorentz also led the state in passing yardage this season. He’s also now seventh on Alaska’s all-time list for passing yards in a single season.

His 41 completions against North Pole has to be a state record. Researching high school sports records in this state is not the easiest task, but I would be absolutely stunned if a quarterback has completed more than 41 passes in a game. I’ve covered really, really good high school quarterbacks who have not had 41 completions in a season.

Colony head coach Brian McIntosh, who has called the offensive plays for the Knights for the past six or seven years, knew he’d have a quality quarterback lining up behind center this year. But McIntosh will admit Lorentz exceeded all expectations this year.

“I knew he was good. I knew he was capable, but I never would have guessed we would have ever thrown that much,” McIntosh said.

Colony evolved into a pass-happy offense as the season progressed, but that can be due to a number of reasons. The Knights had injury issues in the backfield. Tailback Wyatt Peltier and fullback Fischer Summers both missed time this season. Those injuries probably contributed to a few tweaks in the game plan. But it also didn’t take McIntosh, Lorentz and the Knights to realize that Colony had a couple of monster wide receivers, one split out to each side of the field. Juniors Daniel Bilafer and Antonio Bush, both standing at least 6-foot-3, turned into pass-catching machines for the Knights. Both also etched their names in the school record books.

Bilafer finished the season with 61 catches, nearly double the total of the prior school mark of 35 set by Cole Magner in 1999. Bush now holds the school record for receiving yards in a season with 851. Bilafer’s 688 would have also broken the prior mark of 588 set by Jason Deml in 1999.

Bilafer’s 61 catches also place him second in Alaska history for receptions in a season, nine short of the record of 70 set by Service’s Alan Busey last year.

McIntosh said a turning point for the Colony passing game came in Week 3 win over Wasilla when Lorentz threw for 226 yards during a steady downpour at Wasilla High.

Two weeks later, Lorentz threw for 245 yards against another Valley rival, Palmer.

“We knew our passing game was pretty solid,” McIntosh said. “We knew we had some talent with our three- and four-wide (sets).”

The passing game also became an extension of the running game.

“My thing is if we can get 3 or 4 yards a play, we’re going to do that,” McIntosh said. “We’re going to do that.”

Colony played a pair of medium-schools opponents, Kenai and Skyview, but Lorentz still threw for about 1,600 yards against teams from the Railbelt, which is top to bottom the best conference in Alaska.

Even last year, as the odd man out in the Railbelt, Lorentz put up decent numbers. He completed more than 50 percent of his passes and threw for 609 yards. Lorentz finished with only four touchdown passes. But his numbers were solid, considering what Colony had to work with. The Knights, a team made up mostly by first-year varsity sophomores and juniors, had only one returning varsity player from the year before.

“As a staff, we knew he could get it done,” McIntosh said of Lorentz as a junior. “It was a matter of the first time being on varsity, learning the system.”

But McIntosh said this year, he watched his senior develop to be one of the top quarterbacks in the state.

“He worked really hard in the offseason, he worked with the receivers. It paid off,” McIntosh said.

Lorentz’s high school career ended with a tremendous swing in emotion. On one hand, Lorentz put together one of the finest games by a quarterback that we’ll ever see in Alaska high school football. His performance will be talked about for years to come. But the Knights fell short at North Pole, losing 48-42, and ultimately would be eliminated from playoff consideration due to a tiebreaker.

“We’re still mourning that one,” McIntosh said. “The kids played so hard. I think that’s kind of how they can sleep at night. They know the chips didn’t go our way, but they know they left it all on the field.”

Last year, Lorentz was the answer to a trivia question.

Who was the only starting quarterback in the seven-team Railbelt not named first-team?

And this year, Lorentz is once again the answer to a trivia question.

Who broke multiple Colony school records and nearly broke the Alaska record for passing in single game?

Sounds better, right?