Ben Woods threw for 440 yards and four touchdowns, leading Kent-Meridian High School to a 42-36 come-from-behind victory over Tahoma in a South Puget Sound League Northeast 4A game last Saturday at French Field.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The win sets up a showdown between the Royals (3-0 in league, 5-1 overall) and Kentwood (2-0, 5-1) for the division lead. Kickoff is 7 p.m. Friday at French Field.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“This game means a lot for a lot of reasons,” said K-M coach Brett Allen of this weekend’s showdown. “There’s the (Claude) French trophy (emblematic of the top Kent football team), No. 1 seed at stake, division title at stake. The fact that it’s got this much laying on the line makes it that much bigger.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Against Tahoma, Kent-Meridian trailed 36-21 in the third quarter before rallying for the victory.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Woods hit Vinnie Malietufa for a 23-yard touchdown, pulling the Royals to within 36-27 late in the third quarter. Woods then found Emmanuel Daigbe on a 4-yard scoring strike to cut the Bears’ lead to 36-34 with 8:42 left in the game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gabe Gallman’s 4-yard TD run and two-point conversion smash pushed the Royals in front to stay, 42-36, with 6:03 remaining.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Royals prevailed despite distractions, including increased media attention, rain delays and the school celebrating senior night.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I felt it was kind of a win-ugly situation,” Allen said. “There were a lot of distractions. Right before the thunder delay we were in a pretty good groove. To the boys’ credit, they stayed faithful.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Marc Dennis, a junior, led the Royals with six receptions for 169 yards and two touchdowns. Daigbe, also a junior, had six catches for 118 yards and two TDs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Malietufa finished with 41 yards on the ground for the Royals.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For Allen, the challenge is to keep his team hungry.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“What I talked to them about is that all of our goals are still in season,” he said. “Our goal was not to clinch a playoff spot, our goal is to play in Tacoma in December.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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| <\/td>\n<\/p>\n | Conf. <\/strong><\/td>\n<\/p>\n| Overall<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n<\/p>\n | W<\/span><\/td>\n<\/p>\n | L<\/span><\/td>\n<\/p>\n | W<\/span><\/td>\n<\/p>\n | L<\/span><\/td>\n<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n | Kent Meridian<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 5<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 1<\/td>\n<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n | Kentwood<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 2<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 5<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 1<\/td>\n<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n | Kentlake<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 1<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 1<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n | Tahoma<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 2<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n | Kentridge<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/p>\n | 6<\/td>\n<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n | \u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ben Woods threw for 440 yards and four touchdowns, leading Kent-Meridian High School to a 42-36 come-from-behind victory over Tahoma in a South Puget Sound League Northeast 4A game last Saturday at French Field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":16549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16548"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |