On Friday night Steffin Church, who shared quarterbacking duties with Caleb Saulo, made the decisive play for Kentlake in its 49-34 win over Thomas Jefferson at Federal Way.

With 55.4 seconds remaining in the game, Church picked off Jefferson’s dual-threat quarterback KW Williams and returned it for a touchdown, making what had been a back and forth game seem like a blowout.

“Church, he’s a pretty smart kid,” said Kentlake head coach Chris Paulson. “(Williams) makes me a better coach.”

The shootout was an offensive highlight reel for both squads.

Kentlake struck first on a Saulo to Austin Pernell touchdown connection just 55 seconds into the game.

The Falcons followed that up with a rushing touchdown by Tanner Lucas from the one yard line.

After one quarter of play Kentlake was up 13-0 and Jefferson hadn’t even gotten into Falcons territory.

Lucas picked up his second touch down of the game with 5:01 left in the first half but the Falcons two point conversion failed, putting them up 19-0.

Jefferson got on the board with a field goal in the second quarter then closed the gap when Williams threw a 40 yard bomb to a receiver for the Raiders first touch down of the game, followed by a successful two point conversion making it 19-11.

The Raiders put another field goal through the uprights shortly before the end of the first half to make it 19-14.

Barely a minute and a half into the second quarter Jefferson fumbled the ball and Kentlake recovered. A play later Pernell ran the ball on an option from the 50 yard line and took it down the sideline to the end zone to put Kentlake up 26-14.

But Jefferson turned right around and put together a drive that ended with a 15-yard strike from Williams to Rithvik Lagisetti to make it 26-20 Kentlake.

Not to be outdone, Saulo took the snap on the first play of Kentlake’s next drive and ran it 80 yards to the house to extend the lead to 33-20.

What Saulo could do, though, so could Williams who on the next drive slipped away from eight Falcons defenders and danced his way to an 84 yard touchdown run right in front of the Kentlake bench to close it to 33-27.

Both teams ensuing drives were stymied.

Then with 1:07 left in the third quarter Jefferson’s Yobel Mengistu hauled in an interception which set up a touch down toss from Williams to Gunner Sonnenfeld with 4.9 seconds left in the quarter. With the point after touch down kick good, the Raiders took their first — and only — lead of the game, 34-33.

Kentlake then scored on its next two possessions, a field goal with 7:20 left in the game then after its defense held Jefferson, Saulo faked a handoff and took the ball in for the touchdown to make it 43-34.

And then came Church’s big defensive play.

“We’ve been talking for the past couple weeks about finishing,” Paulson said. “So, to see them come out in the second half and finish, it was great. If you can turn over that many times and still score 49 points, that’s great. We did a lot better job of finishing. This is the first time in four games we’ve played all 48 minutes.”

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the Kentlake students chanted “four and oh, four and oh!’

Kentlake, now 4-0 in the SPSL North, has a strong lead heading into its homecoming game next week against Tahoma which beat Auburn at home 34-21 to go to 2-2.

“We know Tahoma is pretty good,” Paulson said. “You’ve got to be ready when you’re going up against a team coached by Tony Davis.”