Prep Football: Kalama spins familiar tale in Trico return
'Nooks hang on for win over King's Way with Brown's four scores
Drew Lawson
Special to Blast Zone Media
KALAMA—The script of Kalama’s matchup with King’s Way Christian read much like the Chinooks’ first two games: build a lead early and hang on late. And while it wasn’t quite as skin-of-the-teeth as last week’s game at Tenino, the Chinooks were still grateful for the 30-point cushion they built before pulling off a 30-20 victory over the Knights at Chinook Stadium.
Doubly sweet was the fact that the Week 3 victory came in Kalama’s first league game as a return member of the 1A Trico League. The Chinooks reclassified to a 1A school after eight years in the Central 2B League.
Or perhaps the correct verbiage is triply sweet, as the victory improved Kalama to 3-0 on the season with six battles of attrition still to come in Trico play.
“I can’t say it’s an easy adjustment (back to Trico) because there’s a lot of good teams in the league,” head coach Mike Phelps said. “Obviously, Seton made it to the semifinals last year. La Center hasn’t lost a league game in two years. Castle Rock and us always play tough against each other.”
Senior quarterback Aiden Brown carried the load, often literally, for the Chinooks. The dual threat star ran for 159 yards and four touchdowns while adding 118 passing yards, accounting for all of Kalama’s scoring output.
Another common theme Friday night was Kalama forcing King’s Way to turn the ball over. The proved true on the second play from scrimmage, when the Chinooks pounced on a Knight fumble.
On the ensuing drive, Brown ran in from 28 yards and hit Jonny Martinez for the 2-point conversion.
And before the sun could disappear behind the Oregon hills across the Columbia River, Kalama had recovered another King’s Way fumble, this time on the kickoff.
The Knight defense stood tall and stopped Kalama inside the 2-yard line, then flipped the field on a defensive pass interference call and a 37-yard strike from Owen Paulson to Rylan Richter, But Kalama held on fourth down and took over at its own 44-yard line.
The Chinooks got down deep into the red zone, but an awry snap went back to the Knights.
“Hats off to King’s Way,” Phelps said. “They played a great second half and took advantage of the mistakes we made, for sure.”
From there the Chinooks and Knights appeared to be playing a variety of hot potato, as King’s Way immediately fumbled and handed the ball back to Kalama at the 16-yard line.
Brown made sure his Superman cape was tighter for this second chance, pirouetting and extending across the goal line while sitting in the lap - but not touching the ground with a knee - of a King’s Way defender on a thrilling 11-yard score that gave the Chinooks a 14-0 lead.
Drew Schlangen made sure his name got into print on the next King’s Way drive, picking off a pass in the red zone and returning it 16 yards to the Kalama 30-yard line.
Brown then substituted his Superman cape for a magician’s garb, performing a first-half hat trick of touchdowns with a final 7-yard scamper that was set up by a 40-yard bomb to Henry Sigfridson.
“I think we came out super strong in the first half,” Brown said. “We were confident going into this game. We just have to work on our second half.”
The display allowed Kalama to hold a 22-0 halftime lead that extended to 30-0 five minutes into the second half. Phelps showed he had a few tricks up his sleeve himself on the drive, calling a perfectly executed hook-and-ladder play on 4th-and-a-drive-to-Longview that set up a 1-yard Brown plunge.
“Our line really just fired out and was physical that whole first half,“ Brown said. “They were creating big holes and doing great, so that was awesome.”
While one could assume King’s Way was buried after the 30-0 lead, the Knights instead began to assemble for battle.
Ryan Charlton ran in a 20-yard score to get the Knights on the board. Owen Paulsen then combined with Sam Somarakis for the King’s Way play of the day with a 27-yard touchdown pass on 4th and 14 that conjured vision of Drew Brees dialing up a Jimmy Graham for a boxout in the end zone.
Kalama fumbled the next kickoff, and King’s Way took over suddenly down just two scores. A Somarakis 1-yard score later, and it was 30-20, but the Chinooks stood tall on the 2-point try to keep it a two-possession game with 10:35 left.
Neither squad found pay dirt for those final 635 ticks of the clock, and the Chinooks were left to celebrate a third-straight win at the end of a battle of previously undefeated Trico teams.
“King’s Way is so much better than they were last year,” Phelps said. “They’ve certainly turned the corner.”
Behind Brown’s offensive output, Schlangen ran for 78 yards, including a couple of key first downs in chew-the-clock situations. Sigfridson led Kalama with 52 receiving yards.
A 1A Trico schedule continues for Kalama next Friday when the Chinooks host a winless Fort Vancouver side.
“There’s a lot more league games for us, and that’s a talk that we had with our kids before the game, saying, ‘From here on out (it) counts,’” Phelps said. “You don’t want to drop a game that you can win. It’s going to affect playoff seeding, it’s going to affect who you see in the first round and if you let enough of those losses pile up, you’re not going to be in the playoffs…everything from here on out counts twice as much as we’re used to.”
Kalama (3-0, 1-0 league) will host Fort Vancouver on Friday at 7 p.m.