SECOND EFFORT

PALMER — Wasilla assistant coach Abe Salmon found a way to motive the Warriors Friday afternoon. Salmon gathered results from his team’s last 17 meetings with the Colony Knights, a list that included only five Wasilla wins.

And Friday night, Wasilla used a big second half to ensure history did not repeat itself.

Wasilla scored 35 unanswered points to post a 42-7 win over Colony at Colony High School.

“Looking at the past, there’s been a trend of Colony beating Wasilla. We took the (results) out, let the young men look at it and let them decide what they want to do,” Wasilla head coach Kent Rilatos said.

Wasilla used four second-half touchdowns to blow open a close game and notch the win to improve to 4-2 overall and 3-1 in the Railbelt Conference.

Rilatos said after the Warriors hit halftime with a slim 14-7 lead, the Wasilla coaching staff revisited the Colony-Wasilla football history lesson.

“We went into halftime and talked again about that,” Rilatos said. “We said this is a new (era). We need to come out and show our crowd that’s been backing us so much that we are here, really here to stay.”

Wasilla needed less than three minutes of the second half to put a score on the board. Senior Devon Teeling, who rushed for a game-high 190 yards and three touchdowns in the win, capped a six-play drive with a 2-yard score.

“That first touchdown (of the second half) was huge,” Wasilla senior lineman Ryan Pomrenke said. “It was really important. It changed the whole momentum of the game.”

Teeling rushed for 133 yards and two touchdowns during the final two quarters. Early in the fourth quarter, Teeling needed only two runs to cover 80 yards and carry the Warriors into the end zone.

On the first play of the drive, Teeling broke a number of tackles en route to a 79-yard run. Teeling got the call on the next play and plunged into the end zone.

“He’s our workhorse and a lot of his yards come after contact,” Rilatos said. “He believes that if he gets the ball and gets contact, he’ll still get positive yards.”

Mitchell Rilatos and Blake Cullip also posted second-half touchdown runs.

While Teeling was leading the Wasilla offense, the Warrior defensive line helped Wasilla hold the Knights to only three rushing yards, 80 total yards and seven points.

The Warriors finished with several sacks in the game. Senior defensive end Braydon Kuiper had a hand of sacks in the win.

“With defensive ends Pat Clark and Braydon Kuiper, we’ve got that thunder and lightning thing,” Rilatos said.

Rilatos also credited Dillin Wiggins and noted the return of Dakota Hermans.

“All of them were very important,” Rilatos said.

While Colony struggled offensively in the second half, the Knights impressed Wasilla in the first.

“The first half was a hard-fought battle,” Rilatos said. “They did things that really pickled us. We had to make some adjustments at halftime.”

Tyler Anderson gave Wasilla the early lead with a 36-yard touchdown catch, his 10th score in six games. But Colony answered with a 4-yard Ryan Ertz touchdown. The key play on that scoring drive, arguably, was an 18-yard Antonio Bush catch that moved the Knights inside the 20-yard line.

The teams were tied late in the first half, but Wasilla was able to cash in on a Colony fumble and take a 14-7 lead with Teeling’s first touchdown of the game.

“Since it was 14-7 at half, we knew they weren’t going to roll over,” Pomrenke said. “Finally we got something going.”

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com and follow him at twitter.com/matsu_sports.

Wasilla 42, Colony 7

Friday, Colony High School

First quarter:

Wasilla — Anderson 36 pass from Fielder (Perry kick) 4:33.

Second quarter:

Colony — Ertz 4 run (Meaney kick) 11:56.

Wasilla — Teeling 1 run (Perry kick) 4:15.

Third quarter:

Wasilla — Teeling 2 run (Perry kick) 9:12.

Wasilla — Rilatos 11 run (Perry kick) 2:39.

Fourth quarter:

Wasilla — Teeling 1 run (Perry kick) 10:28.

Wasilla — Cullip 13 run (Perry kick) 8:30.

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS:

RUSHING — Wasilla: Teeling 24-190, Fielder 7-52, Rilatos 2-13, Cullip 1-13, Edwards 1-(-5); Colony: Lorentz 12-(-26), Ertz 8-6, Summers 6-30, Niver 1-(-7).

PASSING — Wasilla: Fielder 5-12-1—67, Teeling 1-1-0—10; Colony: Lorentz 8-15-1—77, Niver 0-2-0—0.

RECEIVING — Wasilla: Teeling 2-17, Anderson 1-36, Kuiper 1-16, Rilatos 1-10, Adair 1-(-2); Colony: Bush 4-31, Root 2-16, Bilafer 1-19, Summers 1-11.