Knights win Railbelt

FAIRBANKS — The host West Valley Wolfpack had two things in common with the Colony Knights before Saturday afternoon’s Railbelt Conference and regular season-ending high school football game.

Both teams started the season with winless streaks — West Valley with three losses in a row and Colony with four straight defeats. They also were playing Saturday for a berth in the large schools state playoffs.

The similarities between the teams ended after Colony won 41-12 and secured first place in the Railbelt Conference. West Valley, meanwhile, saw its comeback season come to an end, finishing at 1-3 in conference and 3-5 overall in Kyle Allison’s first year as head coach of his alma mater.

“We kept giving effort, we never gave up,” said Wolfpack wide receiver Dv’nn Cooks, who grabbed a 4-yard touchdown pass from quarterback and fellow junior Charles Sudduth.

“We just had to keep working, keep playing,’’ Cooks added. “Sorry about the seniors. We worked hard for them and next year we’re coming back.”

The loss dampened the last game for 12 Wolfpack seniors.

“I couldn’t be any prouder of the seniors,” Allison, a former Wolfpack quarterback and assistant coach, said after his team’s postgame meeting. “They built this program the last four years. West Valley was nowhere until this class came in. They built a prestige and they brought a respectable product back to the football field.

“I’m so proud of our seniors,’’ he added. “It’s a bitter taste in your mouth right now, but we guaranteed the seniors that we’re going to carry on the legacy of what they started here at West Valley. We’re going to start building on next year, plugging people in (positions) where we lost our seniors at, and make sure that we don’t let what they started die.”

One of those seniors, Brendan Williams, started a West Valley roll with a 69-yard touchdown dash for a 6-3 lead with 3:16 left in the first quarter. Williams broke four tackles before sprinting along the right sideline to the end zone.

“We had seen that they were overloading that side and we called a play that Williams was able to make an athletic move on and he took it the distance for us,’’ Allison said.

Williams finished as West Valley’s leading rusher with five carries for 63 net yards, and his touchdown proved to be the Wolfpack’s only lead of the game. The hosts came no closer than 13-12 on Cooks’ touchdown catch with 2:36 left in the second quarter.

“I think in the first half we came out prepared,’’ Allison said. “At halftime, I believe Colony made adjustments to what we were doing and we just didn’t adjust. Moving forward in retrospect and looking at that, I think we should have maybe done a couple of things differently, but that’s part of a football game.”

Sudduth finished with 22 yards passing on five of 16 attempts and he left the game with an injury late in the third quarter. Freshman Zach Lester took over in the fourth, completing seven of 14 passes, including his last three in a row, for 91 yards with an interception.

Colony wide receiver Daniel Bilafer’s multi-point afternoon produced the game’s first score and helped ignite the Knights toward a large schools state quarterfinal berth this coming weekend at their home field in Palmer.

“It means absolutely everything,’’ Bilafer said of the victory. “I’ve been playing with these guys since the fifth grade and this is what we dreamed of and this is all the hard work that we done. This is what we’ve been wanting.”

Bilafer converted five point-after kicks Saturday and he delivered a 32-yard field goal for the game’s first score with 4:31 left in the opening quarter. In the second quarter, he provided a 21-yard field goal with 6:20 left and he leaped high to snag Bryce Niver’s 4-yard scoring lob with 4.9 seconds left on the clock before halftime.

The Knights, 3-1 Railbelt and 4-4 overall, got a game-high 159 yards rushing from Logan Conway, who scored on runs of 1 yard in the second quarter and 11 in the fourth quarter.

Niver added a 1-yard touchdown plunge for the only score of the third quarter, and Fischer Summers contributed a 3-yard scoring burst with 8:07 left in the fourth quarter for the game’s last touchdown.

Knights head coach Brian McIntosh needed only one world to describe Colony’s turnaround from its doldrums in the first half of the season.

“Amazing,’’ he said.

“It’s indescribable,’’ McIntosh added. “The kids never stopped believing and that was our mantra. They just played their hearts out the second half of the season and it finally came together.”

One of the teams that Colony beat in the regular season, the Lathrop Malemutes, benefitted from the CHS victory Saturday. The Malemutes secured the Railbelt’s third and final playoff spot and will open the postseason in Anchorage.

Colony 41, West Valley 12

Saturday, Fairbanks

First Quarter:

Colony—D. Bilafer 32 FG, 4:31.

West Valley—Williams 69 run (botched snap on kick), 3:16.

Second Quarter

Colony—Conway 1 run (D. Bilafer kick), 10:18.

Colony—D. Bilafer 21 FG, 6:20.

West Valley—Cooks 4 pass from Sudduth (kick failed), 2:36.

Colony—D. Bilafer 4 pass from Niver (D. Bilafer kick), :4.9.

Third Quarter

Colony—Niver 1 run (D. Bilafer kick), 8:58.

Fourth Quarter

Colony—Conway 11 run (D. Bilafer kick), 10:40.

Colony—Summers 3 run (D. Bilafer kick), 8:07.

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING—Colony: Conway 29-159, Niver 20-91, Summers 1-3, S. Bilafer 1-3, Mokelke 1-2. West Valley: Williams 5-63, Sudduth 10-49, Demario 10-6, Cooks 1-2.

PASSING—Colony: Niver 7-14-0-83. West Valley: Sudduth 5-16-0-22, Lester 7-14-1-91.

RECEIVING—Colony: D. Bilafer 5-59, Leigh 2-24. West Valley: Cooks 5-33, Clark 3-33, Willams 3-19, Evanger 1-28.