Simley Offense Rolls In 46-36 Win Over Duluth Denfield

Simley High School senior Darion Fletcher scored four touchdowns to help the Spartans survive the football equivalent of a shootout in a non-conference win over Duluth Denfield on Friday.

Fletcher scored on a 21-yard run in the first quarter, pass receptions of 58 and 35 yards and a 13-yard run in the third quarter. The Spartans had four touchdown plays of 35-yards or longer. The final score was 46-36 in Simley's favor.

“Tonight we really executed and you saw a lot of big plays out of us,” said Brennan McGlauchlen, a senior tight end and defensive lineman for the Spartans. “I thought we dominated the offensive line.”

Simley’s 46-point total Friday matched the number of points the Spartans had scored in six previous games this season.

“It was good for our kids,” said Simley head coach Rex King. “I told them they deserved to finally have the one with the big points on the board. We knew it was there. We felt that our athleticism was greater. We knew they were big, strong, physical, but we thought that our athletes were shiftier.”

Simley scored three times in the second quarter to take command of the game with a 25-13 halftime lead.

Denfield got back in the game with an 80-yard kickoff return to open the second half and trailed just 25-20.

Junior quarterback Nick Wanzek hit Fletcher for a 35-yard scoring strike with 8:18 to play in the third to make it a 33-20 Simley lead. Fletcher then scored on a double reverse to give the Spartans a 40-20 advantage with 2:35 to play in the third.

“I was thrilled with our passing game,” said King. “Absolutely it was there, even when we did false start. We started to clean it up, make it simple. We cleaned up our blocking up front on our passing game and it was huge for us this week. I was thoroughly impressed with the way our quarterback delivered the ball.”

Simley’s Wanzek completed five-yard touchdown run that made it a 46-20 game with 9:27 left. But Simley got sloppy in the waning moments of the game and allowed the Hunters to pull within 10 points before time expired.

Junior defensive back Jake Short intercepted two passes for the Spartans in the second half.

The Spartans improved to 2-5 on the season and remains 1-5 in league play.

“Physically I think we had a bit of an edge on Duluth,” said Simley senior lineman Matt Christianson. “What’s got us every year, what’s got us every game this year has been discipline. So we need to go out there and we need to play disciplined. We still have some things we need to clean up at the end of the game. We didn’t finish it like we should have. We didn’t finish it like we wanted to.

Simley plays at Richfield (1-5, 1-6) Wednesday to wrap up the regular season in a game starting at 7 p.m.