Royal wins third consecutive title with victory over Mount Baker in 1A championship game
The Royal Knights weren’t about to get complacent. The Knights got challenged, sure, on Saturday afternoon at Harry E. Lang Stadium.
But there was no sense from the two-time defending 1A state champions that the outcome of the 2022 state title game didn’t matter because they’d been there and done that. Instead, Royal answered the toughest challenge it faced all season, overcame four turnovers from its offense, and pulled away from No. 10 seed Mount Baker (8-5) in the fourth quarter to win a third straight title, 35-20.
The victory gave the Knights their sixth championship in seven seasons over eight years – the 2020 season was not played due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s been my goal since I can remember,” senior quarterback Dylan Allred said. “To be able to accomplish it is incredible.”
Despite their record, the Mountaineers made the most of their run to the title game. Mount Baker scored first on Saturday, turning the first of the four Royal turnovers into Wilhem Maloley’s eight-yard touchdown run with 5 minutes, 34 seconds left in the first quarter.
The lead didn’t last long, though. Two possessions later, Allred threw the first of his four touchdown passes in the game – to Edgar Delarosa for four yards – to tie things at 7-7 with 1:12 left in the first quarter.
It remained close, in part because of Royal’s penchant for giving the ball back to the Mountaineers for three quarters. Allred’s second interception of the game turned into Marques George’s first of two rushing touchdowns for Mount Baker, which tied the game again at 14-14 with 5:02 to go in the third quarter.
Allred recovered from the two miscues throwing the ball to ultimately complete 16 of 26 passes for 215 yards and those four scores. That offset a huge game on the ground from George, who carried it 28 times for a 1A championship game record 243 yards.
George broke the record from 2002, also against Royal, of 227 yards set by Jevon Butler of Archbishop Murphy. Unlike the Wildcats, the Mountaineers couldn’t ride the big rushing game to a victory, however.
One possession after George tied the game, Edgar Delarosa intercepted a Landon Smith that set Royal up at its own 18-yard line with 2:36 to go in the third quarter. Nine plays later, and after a false start penalty pushed the Knights back to the Mount Baker 6 with a first-and-goal, Dylan Allred hooked up with Lance Allred for a six-yard score that gave Royal the lead for good.
It was Lance Allred’s second touchdown catch of the game.
“We’ve run that play all year,” Lance Allred said. “I knew it was going to work. We were confident.”
The Mountaineers had a chance to tie the game again, taking the ball to the Royal 30 on their drive immediately after the Lance Allred go-ahead catch. But on fourth and five, Smith and his center had trouble with the snap.
Smith, the quarterback, finally got the handle and managed to hand it to George. But when George finally took the handoff there was nowhere to go and he lost two yards, turning the ball back to the Knights with 8:03 remaining.
Dylan Allred capped that drive with a four-yard strike to Bennett Brown, extending the lead to two touchdowns for the first time all game, then the senior quarterback scored a rushing touchdown two plays later after a Mount Baker fumble set Royal up with a first-and-goal at the 5.
Four and a half minutes of clock time later, the Knights were again champions in 1A, an accomplishment they’ll never take for granted.
“It could all end very quickly,” Royal coach Wiley Allred said. “We knew this one could slip away from us. We had to stop turning the ball over.”
