EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE — As a senior on the Eielson Ravens football team, Dwanye Fearon made a promise after two straight first-round playoff losses.
“I was here for the last two losses in the playoffs,” the senior lineman said. “It really hurt, but I promised that I wouldn’t let it happen again.”
With a ton of help from Colten Growden and Ricky Nelson, he got to keep that oath.
Growden scored five touchdowns on a blustery Saturday afternoon to lead the Ravens to a 40-14 victory over the Kenai Kardinals in a small schools high school football quarterfinal playoff game.
Growden ran for 158 yards and four touchdowns and returned an interception 55 yards for his fifth score.
“I just stayed behind the line(men),” Growden said of his running strategy. “That’s where it’s at.”
Nelson added another touchdown for Eielson as he ran for 131 yards on a 23-degree afternoon at Buck Nystrom Field on Eielson Air Force Base.
Growden scored on runs of 2 and 30 yards in the first half to give Eielson a 20-7 lead at halftime.
Kenai head coach Jim Beeson, the fifth-winningest
coach in
“We just beat ourselves in that first half,” Beeson said. “If there was anything we could do wrong, we did it.”
Growden took over the game in the second half with touchdown runs of 7 and 54 yards and he removed any doubt that Eielson would advance.
Nelson scored on a 5-yard run in the first half.
Both of Kenai’s touchdowns came on swing passes from quarterback Dalton Chapell to Billy Kiefer. The first one covered 92 yards in the first quarter to tie the score at 7-7. The second covered 76 yards in the third quarter.
“There wasn’t enough of the other things that worked for us,” Beeson said.
The Eielson defense kept the usually explosive Kiefer quiet. The state’s fourth-best rusher was held to 38 yards on 10 carries.
“I’m sad the season’s over, but we played a good team and a good game,” Kiefer said in a soft voice. “That’s all I gotta say.”
The mobile Chapell was also kept in check. Though he threw for 185 yards, most of that was from the two long plays with Kiefer. He ran for 28 yards on 10 attempts. The Ravens defense stood tallest when the Kardinals threatened to score late in the first half.
Kenai had a first-and-10 on Eielson’s 12-yard line, but the Ravens wouldn’t allow Kardinals running back to convert a fourth-and-2 rushing attempt, stopping him a few links shy on the measuring chains.
They followed that triumph with a punt block early in the third quarter that was recovered by Fearon.
“We watched a lot of tape,” Fearon said of the Eielson defense’s preprations. “Tape in the morning, tape at lunch, and then we had my man, C.K., number 11 right here.”
Fearon was pointing to teammate Charles King, who couldn’t reel in some of Growden’s passes as a wide receiver, but had no such trouble with Chapell’s, getting two interceptions as a defensive back.
The temperature stayed below 30 most of the game, making the ball hard to catch and the accumulation of ice and snow from the past week left the field a perilous surface for running routes.
“Of all years to switch to the spread offense…” Eielson head coach David DeVaughn joked.
The win comes with a dubious prize: Eielson will face the undefeated
Soldotna Stars next weekend in
“It’s gonna take everything we have,” Growden said.
DeVaughn said he’s already offered his players an underdog incentive.
“If we’re not the giant-killers, then who?” he said.
The loss not only erases two years of playoff frustration for the Ravens, but a losing streak since 2000 against the Kardinals.
“It feels nice on a lot of different levels,” DeVaughn said.
DeVaughn must have been feeling good on all all those levels at once as he smiled giddily on the field — a sloppy mix of ice, snow, salt and grass.
“It’s not as cold out when you get a W,” he said with a grin.