The ball hasn\u2019t bounced the way of the Kent-Meridian High football team for the last several years.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Oct. 2, however, the Royals finally had one go their way.<\/p>\n
Defensive end Luke Barzie made the fourth-quarter strip of a Thomas Jefferson running back, and Brandon Harris swooped in for the recovery, helping the Royals secure a 38-34 victory over Thomas Jefferson in a South Puget Sound League North Division game.<\/p>\n
The play not only sealed a win for the Royals (2-2 in league, 3-2 overall), but also helped them remain alive for a playoff berth. The play also assured that another big performance by quarterback David Jones stood up. Jones, who rushed for six touchdowns and threw another a week earlier in a victory over Mount Rainier, also torched the Raiders.<\/p>\n
The fleet-footed senior quarterback rushed for 279 yards and four touchdowns on 19 carries.<\/p>\n
But without the big strip by Barzie and recovery from Harris, Jones\u2019 performance would have gone for not.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the critical play of the game,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI give credit to both of those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Jones deserves his share of credit as well. Especially in the fourth quarter, when the Royals trailed 34-31. It was at that point that Jones delivered his biggest play of the game, going 25 yards for what proved to be a game-winning touchdown.<\/p>\n
Kent-Meridian running back B.J. Phillips also delivered another solid performance, rushing for 87 yards and two touchdowns on 15 carries.<\/p>\n
The win for the Royals sets up a pivotal game on Saturday, Oct. 9, when Kent-Meridian plays host to Tahoma (1-4, 1-4) at 7 p.m. at French Field. With league powers Kentwood, Kentlake and Auburn still on the horizon, a victory over the Bears is critical for the Royals. Kent-Meridian has beaten Tahoma just once (2007) since 1999.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say we need (a win) a lot,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe need to be on that (winning) streak. K-M hasn\u2019t had a (winning) streak in a while. Right now, we\u2019re just taking it one game at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Kentlake 33, Tahoma 21: The Falcons (5-0, 5-0) bolted out to a 19-0 lead early in the second quarter and never trailed against the Bears (0-4, 1-4).<\/p>\n
Kentlake junior Stephon Vaifale rushed for 106 yards and a touchdown on 15 carries while Caleb Mathena added a pair of interceptions to help the Falcons remain unbeaten.<\/p>\n
Junior Stephon Vaifale carried 15 times for 106 yards rushing and one touchdown and sophomore Caleb Mathena added two interceptions for the Falcons.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Rogers 47, Kentridge 0: The Chargers (2-2, 2-3) had their two-game winning streak snapped by the Rams in a nonleague loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ball hasn\u2019t bounced the way of the Kent-Meridian High football team for the last several years.
\nOn Saturday, Oct. 2, however, the Royals finally had one go their way.
\nDefensive end Luke Barzie made the fourth-quarter strip of a Thomas Jefferson running back, and Brandon Harris swooped in for the recovery, helping the Royals secure a 38-34 victory over Thomas Jefferson in a South Puget Sound League North Division game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18347"}],"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\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18347"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}