Prep football: New Railbelt champs ready for West Valley

Oct. 6, 2006

By DARRELL L. BREESE/ Frontiersman

PALMER - The second season begins tonight for the Colony High School football team, when the Knights host West Valley in the opening round of the state large-school playoffs.

Despite having beaten West Valley 32-7 in Fairbanks during the third week of the season, Colony head coach Jamie Mayo hopes his team will not underestimate the Wolfpack because of that.

&#8220They're a different team now,” Mayo said. &#8220They've got a new coach and have accomplished something we didn't all season, and that is beat Juneau. I've been reminding the guys on the team about that all week. They understand that we can't take them lightly because we beat them before.

Since the last meeting of the two teams, the Wolfpack has replaced longtime head coach Jeff Peterson with William Russell, who coached many of the West Valley Players when they played youth

football.

After Russell took over, all West Valley did was win its last two games of the season, including beating defending large schools state champion Juneau-Douglas.

Having starting the season with a 2-4 record, the Wolfpack have been in playoff mode. Needing to win both its remaining games to extend their season, they responded by coming from behind to beat both Juneau and North Pole. Running back Dustin Baxter's touchdown with two minutes remaining against North Pole secured the Wolfpack a playoff birth.

&#8220They're a team with nothing to lose,” Mayo said. &#8220They played like that last week when they came back against North Pole.”

The North Pole Patriots racked 145 first-half yards from running back Todd McCormick and grabbed five West Valley turnovers to dominate the first half and take a 14-0 lead into the break. They extended the lead to 20-0 before the Wolfpack mounted their comeback.

&#8220If we get a lead early against them we can't afford to let up,” Mayo added. &#8220They were down by 20 and had the determination to comeback last week.

The Knights come into the game after putting together a balanced offensive attack in a 55-6 win over Lathrop to not only secure the Railbelt Conference title, but also the conference top-seed for the playoffs.

&#8220Our offense has both run and passed the ball well all season,” Mayo said. &#8220Saturday we executed them both, and play without flaw on both sides of the ball if we hope to win.”

Against Lathrop the Knights recorded 407 yards total offense, 274 yards rushing and 133 passing. Defensively they held Lathrop to 108 total yards and allowed just one touchdown. The defense also forced 5 turnovers.

Quarterback Teddy Babcock hooked up with three different receivers for touchdown passes, increasing his season total to 15, tops in the Railbelt Conference.

Teams must win their final three games to take home the state championships. Mayo believes that today's game might be the toughest of them all.

&#8220I told the team that of the three games you need to win in the playoffs, this game is the one that scares me the most,” Mayo explained. &#8220We're playing a team that was not supposed to be playing right now and that makes them very dangerous. If we have one player who doesn't take this game seriously and looks past them, we can get in trouble against them and lose.”

Game time for the Colony-West Valley is 7 p.m. at Colony High School. The winning team advances to the state large school semifinal game against the winner of tonight's Chugiak-East playoff game Oct. 13, under the lights and on the turf at Anchorage Football Stadium.

Contact Darrell L. Breese at 352-2267 or at darrell.breese@f

Frontiersman.com.