Logan Lober is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Casteel High School for AZPreps365.com.

Casteel High School opened region play with a hard-fought 49-28 loss on Friday night to the Chandler Wolves, falling to 4-2.

Chandler’s offensive line helped the Wolves start to pull away in the second half, as they created big holes for the running backs that led to touchdown runs of 87 and 76 yards, as well as a 75-yard run to put the game away with three minutes left in the game. 

The 87-yard touchdown for Chandler came after a crucial fumble by Casteel on third-and-goal from the 1-yard line. 

A touchdown would’ve brought the Colts within eight points late in the third quarter.

Instead, some more late-game mistakes caused Casteel’s upset hopes to slip away.

Head coach Bobby Newcombe will look for his team to clean up some of those mistakes highlighted in the second-half heading into a new week.

“We had some mistakes in the game that are just unproductive for our team,” Newcombe said. “We’ve got to clean those up and play a little more polished football, focus a little bit more throughout the game and all the way through and I think we’ll be more competitive."

It doesn’t get much tougher than facing the undefeated top-ranked team in the state on the road, but the Colts came out strong right away.

On the first play from scrimmage, defensive back Landon Patch picked off Chandler quarterback Blake Heffron and returned it for a touchdown, which ignited the Colts’ sideline.

Despite facing a Chandler defense that has allowed only 10 points per game, the Colts scored 21 points in the first half and remained focused, which was one of their points of emphasis this week.

“Unity was there. That was one of our words of the week. So was effort,” Casteel defensive Gerayas Grimes said. “We were also focused, which is something that coach really emphasized on this week, so I liked that from us.”

There’s no doubt the Colts worked hard leading up to this matchup, and the players were pleased with how it translated to the field, even though they didn’t get the outcome they had hoped for.

“I felt like it translated greatly,” Grimes said. “There were a couple mistakes that we had that we should’ve fix up, but we prepared very well.”

Defensive back Zack Brown shared that his team didn’t feel any type of pressure playing against the top team in Arizona.

“We still got our calls, we were together no matter what and we didn’t back down,” Brown said. “This whole week we prepared like it was any other team.”

The Colts play Perry High at 7 p.m. on Friday at Casteel.