PORT ANGELES — Misdirection was key to prep football success this weekend.
Port Angeles and Forks both relied heavily on misdirection plays in their season-opening wins this weekend. The Roughriders began their 2022 campaign with a 33-19 win over Blaine on Friday night, while Forks beat Sequim 32-14. They may have used different formations, but their strategies were similar.
Port Angeles 33, Blaine 19
The Roughriders rolled out a whole new offense against the Borderites. In 2021, Port Angeles relied heavily on getting Daniel Cable wide, then later in the season relied on sophomore quarterback Parker Nickerson to carry more of the offensive load.
Port Angeles used an entire corral of running backs in the Riders’ opener. Kason Albaugh was the workhorse, gaining over 100 yards, much of it up the middle in quick hitters.
Jason Hawes and Landyn Jones each had over 70 yards rushing, almost all of it coming on misdirection plays with Albaugh handing the ball inside to either Hawes or Jones. It was a play that worked virtually every single time with the Blaine defense over-committing to the wrong side of the field. The only problem with the play is several were called back on holding calls and the Riders will have to clean that up. Penalties might have cost the Riders 100 yards of offense.
The Riders gained more than 260 yards on the ground. Port Angeles also played very well on defense, getting a number of big tackles and sacks behind the line of scrimmage from Hawes, Tanner Flores and Thomas Arand. It will be interesting to see what wrinkles Port Angeles will add to its attack now that the cat is out of the bag with its new offense.
Forks 32, Sequim 14
The Spartans used a similar concept against the Wolves, only employing more an old-fashioned single wing formation to get over 100 yards from Nate Dahlgren (187) and Walker Wheeler (114).
That’s a 2B school handling a 2A team, two levels higher. The Spartans barely passed the ball, but also got a big game from Ryan Rancourt on defense with two interceptions, one returned for a touchdown. The Spartans play this weekend at La Conner, always a tough opponent.
Sequim did get 210 yards passing from Lars Wiker and a 51-yard TD reception by Adrian Aragon. Sequim looks to regroup at Tenino, a former Evergreen 1A opponent of Forks’.
Kingston 50, East Jefferson 23
Coach Tony Haddenham blamed a lot of missed tackles for East Jefferson’s problems Friday night and that’s a completely correctable problem.
East Jefferson is coming off a Nisqually League title and has shown the pride in the past to bounce back. It’s hard to tell how indicative this game was about the state of the team as Kingston is a 2A school and East Jefferson 1A.
One very big positive to the game: East Jefferson unveiled its flashy new uniforms. For two years, kids wore either Port Townsend or Chimacum uniforms and it was an ugly mix on the field of half blue uniforms and half red uniforms. That’s in the past. The Rivals’ new duds are black with blue trim and blue shoulder pad numbers and red numbers on the front. They look fantastic and the kids should be proud to finally have coordinated uniforms.
Neah Bay 74 Port Angeles JV 7
It’s hard to know just how good the Red Devils are, as they played a junior varsity team from a 2A school. Julian Carrick accounted for five touchdowns in the victory.
Neah Bay was ridiculously young last year, with a team made up almost entire of eighth-graders, freshmen and sophomores. And the Red Devils still made the state 1B football tournament with all that youth.
Now Neah Bay is one year older and more experienced. The Red Devils came in to this season with a lot of hype and this week, we’re going to find out a lot about Neah Bay as the Red Devils play powerhouse Naselle at a neutral site in Forks.
Naselle 38, Quilcene 8
You probably can’t reach too many conclusions about this outcome. Quilcene had bus problems, played the game a day late, was missing 10 players from its roster and coach Trey Beathard correctly said he expected his team to start slowly this season anyway.
The Rangers are having to replace a lot of seniors from a 2021 team that made the state championship game, but they have a lot of firepower.
Expect a better showing this week against Mossyrock, though Beathard thinks Mossyrock is very good and could give Quilcene a difficult game.
Charles Wright 68, Crescent 0
Coach Brian Shimko said the Loggers are young and would have growing pains and Crescent struggled against a private school from Tacoma.
Crescent will likely have a better time of it this weekend against Taholah.
