The Auburn Trojans extended their home winning streak to 47 this Friday with a 24-10 win over Edmonds Woodway in the first round of the district playoffs at Auburn Memorial Stadium.

The Warriors (6-4 overall) were unable to withstand a smothering Trojan (8-2) defense that held tailback Zack Berg to under 100 yards in the game, with the majority of those coming in the second half.

“I thought we did a great job of stopping him, he’s a great runner so you’re not going to hold him to zero,” Auburn coach Gordon Elliott said. “I think in the first half we held them to just a few yards. A good back is going to get some, but if you can keep a kid like that down to just a few yards that’s what you need to do. We had to make sure he didn’t run wild because he’s done that in a few games this year.”

Offensively, Auburn was led by senior Alphonse Wade, who ran the ball 17 times for 138 yards and a touchdown and quarterback Max Pratt who found success punching the ball up the middle 15 times for 120 yards and two touchdowns.

“He actually likes to run the ball,” Wade said. “I think that since teams are keying on me it actually opens up the middle for him and that’s how he gets the big runs.”

“He’s a good solid runner and in our offense, the quarterback running is an important part of it,” Elliott said. “And he does a good job of it as a power runner and when you have a power runner that makes the offense go better. He does a good job of keeping them honest inside so we can run the outside plays. They started out the game over shifting for the outside plays, so we had to bring them in a little bit with Max.”

“Credit goes to coach,” Wade said. “His schemes looked great, they just can’t figure out how to stop our offense. We have some big guys up front, but I think it’s the whole motion thing, they don’t know where the ball is going.”

On defense, the Trojans stymied Edmonds Woodway’s running game, forcing the Warriors to take to the air.

“Our defense stepped up really big this game,” Wade, who had an interception, said. “They played great, this is probably one of our best defensive games.”

For Auburn, the only area of concern in the game was several penalties, including several crucial holding calls.

“We need to work on our penalties, we had way too many penalties,” Wade said. “We’re definitely going to get in trouble for that at practice. There will be a lot of running at practice.”

“Some of them I think were unearned, but we’ve been a little undisciplined at times this year, sometimes we get sloppy and tired,” Elliott said. “And we had some holding calls that bogged us down a little bit. And as you get further in the season you can’t do those things.”

The win earns the Trojans the No. 5 seed from District 3. The team will hit the road to face Skyview (8-2) at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Kiggins Bowl in Vancouver.

Last year Auburn ended its season with a 34-21 loss to Skyview at the Kiggins Bowl.

“We’ve been there before,” Elliott said. “We have a little experience being down there. For me, it’s like going home. That’s where I started my head coaching career, I coached down there for 11 years (with Camas and Columbia River). Our kids know what it’s all about, so hopefully we can go down there and play well.”