History and heartbreak highlight first week of prep football season

One team celebrated victory for the first time, and another extended its state-record winning steak. One team watched its 19-point lead disappear during the final nine minutes of play, and two squads from Alaska’s smallest class nearly knocked off teams from higher divisions.

And that all happened on Friday night.

What a way to open the 2017 prep football season. There was some history and some heartbreak. Let’s start with the history first.

Huskies grab first victory

Three different players combined to rush for nearly 500 yards as the Redington Huskies earned their first win in school history, a 54-40 victory over Monroe Catholic Friday night in Fairbanks. Quarterback Sam Reed rushed for 243 yards and two scores, including a 79-yard scamper for a touchdown on just the second play from scrimmage of the game.

The win comes after 12 straight losses since the Knik-area school opened its doors for the 2015-2016 school year. Redington made its debut as a varsity program last season, and finished 0-8. The Huskies fielded just a junior varsity squad in 2015 and were winless in four tries.

The streak continues

The most anticipated game on the Week 1 slate was state power Soldotna’s trip to West Anchorage, and a meeting between the Stars, the five-time defending medium-schools state champs, and the Eagles, who won the large-school state crown in 2016 and finished as the runner-up last year.

And there’s also the streak.

Soldotna entered the West game riding a 49-game winning streak, a state record. SoHi hasn’t dropped a game since losing to Palmer during the first week of the 2016 season.

And the Stars kept the streak alive. Soldotna blanked the Eagles 21-0 at West High to extend the streak to 50 straight wins. Soldotna is now tied for the third longest winning streak in the nation with Grand Meadow High in Minnesota.

Grand Meadow does not open its season until Aug. 31.

According to maxpreps.com, Kimberly High in Wisconsin currently has the longest streak at 56 games. Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas, Nevada, is second at 54 games.

Now for the heartbreak

Three teams, Friday night, watched leads disappear in the fourth quarter, including two that were playing opponents from a higher division.

Let’s start with Palmer. Moose senior Larry Cutsforth scored on the first play of the final quarter to give Palmer a 19-0 lead over the North Pole Patriots. But much like a Patriot missile, North Pole scored 20 unanswered points during the final nine minutes of play to blast what appeared to be a Palmer victory.

North Pole ran in the 2-point conversion with 38 seconds left to play to edge Palmer. It’s not the first time late heroics decided the outcome in a Palmer-North Pole game. In the last meeting in 2014, former Palmer standout Chase Ferris caught a tipped ball and scored in the final moments to give Palmer the 54-49 win over the Patriots.

Houston was one of a pair of Aurora Conference teams that nearly knocked off a school from a higher division Friday. In its first meeting in school history against Juneau-Douglas, the Hawks carried a lead into the fourth quarter. Juneau needed 13 unanswered points during the final frame to beat Houston 27-20. The Aurora is a Division III team, in the class formerly known as the small-schools. Juneau is part of the Division II medium schools.

Eielson, the team that beat Houston in the small-schools state championship game last year, nearly beat Interior rival West Valley, a Fairbanks school in the Division I Railbelt Conference. West Valley needed a late field goal, a 41-yarder by Ethan Raygor, to beat Eielson 17-15.

On Saturday, another field goal stood as the difference between a Division I and Division II program. Noah Winsor hit a 35-yard field goal for Division I South Anchorage in the first quarter, and that proved to be the only scoring in South’s 3-0 victory over Division II Thunder Mountain. If you’re the Falcons, you probably call that a heartbeaker. If you’re South, it’s more like a concern.

Regardless, the season’s lowest scoring game came in the first week of the season.

Making a statement

Aside from the history made by Redington and Soldotna, Colony and Chugiak scored two of the biggest wins of the weekend.

Colony blasted Service 38-0 in Anchorage. The Knights held a 31-0 halftime lead against a Cougars squad that advanced to the large-schools state semifinals last season.

Chugiak had a big win, opening the season with a 20-6 victory over East Anchorage, the defending large-schools state champions. Senior Derryk Snell, a threat for the Mustangs all over the field, scored three times.

Dimond also had a nice win, beating Lathrop 34-23. Under the guidance of head coach Luke Balash, Lathrop has been the top team in the Fairbanks area in recent years.

ASBN poll

Bartlett and Soldotna are the top teams in the Alaska Sports Broadcasting Network’s prep football polls for the second straight week. Following its 42-20 victory over Wasilla, Bartlett is at the top of the Division I poll. Colony (1-0), Chugiak (1-0), Dimond (1-0) and West Valley (1-0) round out the top 5.

Five-time defending state champion Soldotna leads the Division II/III poll. North Pole (1-0) is second. Despite a loss in Week 1, Eielson (0-1) is ranked third, followed by Kodiak (1-0) and Eagle River (1-0).

Juneau-Douglas, Redington and Homer also received votes in the Division II/III poll.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.