Knights open season with thrilling win over South

ANCHORAGE — Trailing 26-21 in the fourth quarter, Colony Knights quarterback Eric Christy connected twice with Julian McPhail to set up a 5-yard scamper and score from Christy in which he was flushed out of the pocked looking for receivers, but made a move toward the sideline and leaped over defenders into the end zone for the final score of the game.

The Knights defeated South Anchorage 27-26 in an instant classic.

First-year head coach Fred McKenney notched his first win as the varsity mentor after a long run as an assistant coach in the program . Led by Christy at quarterback and a group of talented running backs, the Knights ran 58 times for 236 yards and two scores. Christy wasn’t asked to pass nearly as much as South quarterback Spencer Martin, who aired it out more than 20 times. Colony offensive coordinator Matt Jaronik waited until the last minute to show the passing game, and it paid off.

“That was a huge play. We rely on Julian. He’s a guy that when you look at the things that we do on offense because we have players like that,” Jaronik said.

South’s Carson Jungwirth crossed the goal line from 3 yards out to give the Wolverines a commanding 26-15 lead early in the fourth quarter. On the ensuing kickoff, McPhail grabbed the ball at the 4-yard line and didn’t look back, finding a hole up the right side and outrunning everybody to the end zone. McPhail, who ran 11.7 seconds in the 100-meter dash in the spring, had everyone on the South side beat by the 50-yard line.

South struck first with a score on their first drive when Carson Jungwirth caught a 24-yard pass from Martin. Colony settled for a Noah Krozel field goal to start the second quarter. Krozel kicked three field goals from 27, 28, and 36 yards, and routinely kicked the ball to the other team’s end zone for a touchback throughout the game.

“Well, nine points, if we didn’t have him we wouldn't have won this game. It’s nice to have a kicker who can kick that well,” McKenney said.

While Martin was able to orchestrate his way around the field, passing to a variety of talented receivers, the Colony defense took some of those passes away. Zane Virvilo swiped Martin’s pass with 7:36 left in the first half. The Knights capitalized on the turnover with an Eric Christy score from 5 yards out. Martin added another throwing touchdown to Jaden Heartwell and Krozel added another field goal to cut South’s lead to 1 at half with the score 13-12.

The Colony defense came up with another big play to start the second half as John Kelsey swiped another Martin pass. Taking advantage of good field position in the fourth quarter with only a minute left in the game, Christy connected twice with McPhail.

“His demeanor any time he came off the field... he came over to me he, it was the same facial expression from him, it was never down it was always what’s next?,” Jaronik said.

His first catch of the drive was leaping over the middle, as Christy had put it at the top of his jump. McPhail soared into the air and wrestled the ball away from the South defender for nearly an 18-yard gain.

South marched 58 yards down the field in just over 30 seconds following the Christy score. They were unable to make a long field goal to win the game. Colony moves on to play Palmer next week.