The Royal Knights are on their way back to the big dance looking for their the third-straight 1A crown after turning back Newport 35-7 at Lions Field in Moses Lake Saturday.

“It’s great to be going back to the Dome – really excited to be there again,” coach Wiley Allred said. “It’s a big credit to the kids to have this opportunity for a third year in a row.”

The Royal faithful packed the home side of the stadium in anticipation of an exciting semifinal round and they got their money’s worth as the Knights didn’t disappoint, coming up big on both sides of the ball throughout the contest.

Royal won the coin toss and deferred to the second half as has been the teams’ preference all season long.

Hoping to jump up top early and make the Knight’s play catch-up, the Grizzlies opening drive stalled in their own end of the field and Newport had to punt.

The Knights mounted a time consuming drive on their initial posession, but it too stalled deep in Grizzlies territory and Royal sent in the special teams group looking to put three points on the board. But a bit of razzle-dazzle on a fake field goal attempt inside the 10 put the ball at the 1-yard line. Alonzo Hernandez punched it in on the next play (PAT) and the Knights led 7-0 with just over three minutes to go in the first quarter.

A Corbin Christensen interception moments later at the Royal 45 five stopped what looked like the answering score and set up a second TD run from Hernandez to extended the Knights lead to 14-0.

The Grizzlies defense stiffened and held Royal to a lone second quarter touchdown on a 5-yard Sawyer Jenks to Christensen hookup.

Newport desperately needed to post points before the break to stay in it, but the Knights defense refusing to yield came up with back-to-back sacks to pin the Grizzlies deep in their own territory to end the half.

Still Newport had to be somewhat happy holding Royal to just 21 first half points and stifling a typically stout Royal rushing attack to well under 100 yards.

“They didn’t make it easy on us,” Allred said. “They were ducking under our counters quite a bit and so we had to change our blocking scheme going into the second half.”

The slight adjustments worked to perfection as the Knights Lorenzo Myrick busted loose for two long touchdown runs and finished the game with 129 yards on just six carries.

“Their backers were reading really well in the first half and made it tough to find a place to run,” Myrick said. “But we kept our composure and our ‘O’ line opened up some big holes and we got it going in the second half.”

Newport opened up third quarter scoring on a 10-yard Koa Pancho to Jacob Kirkwood pitch and catch to close the gap to 21-7.

Royal answered back on a 21-yard scamper from Myrick and then capped off the scoring on a 39-yard Myrick run in the fourth quarter.

Christensen turned in a monster game at the receiver position with 145 yards on eight receptions. Jenks completed 14-of-24 passes for 190 yards. Hernandez finished with 95 yards on 24 carries.

Royal held the Newport offense to just 175 total yards. The Grizzlies were 5-of-13 on third down situations.

“Our goal on defense was to hold down their rushing attack — we gave up some completions in the second half but they we’re still unable to run the ball all day,” Allred said. “Their quarterback is a really dynamic athlete, but we caught him behind the line a few times and that goes against the rushing stats — I don’t think he had more than 5 yards on any run.”

The Grizzlies finished with minus 19 yards for the game.

“Manny Alvarez who doesn’t play much on defense came in for us and had a stellar game — so did Rams Gonzalez. Logan Gomez as usual at nose tackle was reeking havoc,” Allred said. “Alonso and Lorenzo led the team in tackles and Jack Diaz, Isaac Ellis and CJ Quintero, who had a couple of sacks, came up big for us as well.”

Allred had high praise for Christensen too, who has been to the big dance three-straight years and will be in a wearing a Knights uniform for the last time Saturday.

“Corbin has had three awesome years for us. He’s been a starter at wide receiver, but didn’t start at cornerback until the championship game against Kings three years ago,” Allred said. “He’s 6’3’’ and we just told him not to let anyone get deep on him — Kings had two tall receivers who were really fast and he did a great job defending them. You tell kids every year you never know when they are going to get their opportunity so they need to be ready and Corbin was. He’s a quality kid who handles pressure well and really wasn’t and hasn’t been bothered by it (pressure) at all.”

Christensen credited his teammates for the win that put Royal into the championship game.

“Containing their quarterback was definitely the key to the win. “They had a pretty good running back, but we knew the quarterback was going to run around like he did and put the ball up so we were just trying to contain him and make sure our D-backs stayed with their receivers,” he said. “We made some big plays on offense – our ‘O’ line destroyed – we put in an offensive linemen at fullback and he busted up some pretty big holes too that allowed Lorenzo to bust off a couple of big runs.”

Royal now gets the chance to defend its 1A title when the Knights take the field against Meridian in the Gridiron Classic Championship in the Tacoma Saturday. Not an easy task if you ask coach Allred.

“Meridian is really good, which they should be at this point. They have a Division I quarterback who has committed to Eastern and they have been playing really good defense particularly the last month or so,” he said. “We played them in 2006 in their first year from 2A to 1A ball and lost to them in overtime in the semi’s. They have the same coach — have a great coaching staff and have won the championship three or four times over the years. They run a lot of stuff and give you a lot of different looks — their QB is probably the best in the state – so it’s going to be a good contest.”

Kickoff is 1 p.m.