SEQUIM — Miguel Moroles’ timing wasn’t great.
His family moved from Hawaii to Sequim when he was a sixth-grader, which was during the salad days of Sequim football.
And as a quarterback, the team would one day be his.
But an injury forced him to miss his freshman season, and another did likewise his sophomore year.
When his time finally came his junior season, the Wolves went the entire season without winning a game.
Through it all, though, Moroles kept coming: he showed up for just about everything.
Weightlifting sessions, camps, practices . . . whatever it was, Moroles was probably there.
“I think the most impressive thing about him is his worth ethic,” Sequim coach Erik Wiker said.
“I’d say he was at probably 98 percent of everything we did.
“There’s been only a few kids that did it. It was very odd for him to not be there.”
It all paid off this year for Moroles, who has been selected as the All-Peninsula Football Offensive MVP by area coaches and the Peninsula Daily News sports staff.
The Wolves won four games and made the postseason, and Moroles, a senior, completed 91 of 132 passes for 1,083 yards and nine touchdowns and ran for 722 yards and 11 scores on 102 carries, and was voted to the Olympic League 2A first team.
Moroles was even there at team functions when he was injured. (“He’d be at all the open gyms with a boot on,” Wiker said.)
“I think a lot of it was just how I was brought up,” Moroles said.
“My parents tried to make sure that you worked hard and did stuff you didn’t want to do.”
“Especially with team sports, just be a leader and lead by example.
“I always wanted to try and participate anyway I could.”
As a freshman, Moroles broke his scapula (shoulder blade). He broke his collarbone during a practice early in his sophomore season. (He also broke his ankle playing lacrosse at the end of his junior year, which caused him to miss a portion of summer football practices.)
When he finally was healthy entering his junior season, the Sequim coaches were wary.
They were aware of his athleticism, but they also were familiar with his injury history.
So there weren’t many run played called for Moroles early in the season.
But in the third game of the 2013 season, he rushed for 136 yards and three TDs and nearly led Sequim back from a 34-0 deficit in a 41-35 loss to Bremerton.
Moroles’ speed became Sequim’s best weapon, especially his senior year when just about every running back on the team went down with injury.
“He’s a really good athlete and made things happen with his feet,” Wiker said.
“He was a good athlete that became great through hard work. It was not given to him. That’s the ultimate compliment.”
This spring, Moroles ran the second-fastest 100-meter dash on the North Olympic Peninsula (11.45 seconds), third-fastest 200 (23.27) and second-best 400 (52.43).
He says he wasn’t always this fast.
“Not when I was in middle school,” Moroles said.
“Once I started getting into working out and stuff [the speed came].
“And, honestly, I think puberty just hit me.”
Moroles was hard to get to, hard to take down, and nearly impossible to beat in a foot race. Once he got going in the open field, he was usually gone.
Both Moroles and Wiker agree on what Moroles’ finest game was his senior season.
“I think my favorite moment was playing against North Mason on homecoming,” Moroles said.
“A lot of my family came down for that one game.”
Moroles put on a show for them, running for 131 yards and four TDs on 10 carries while passing for 155 yards in a 26-20 overtime win.
With the Wolves trailing and a little more than six minutes remaining in the game, Moroles kept the ball on a read option. He slipped through one tackle, juked another would-be tackler and darted up the sideline for an 84-yard touchdown run that tied the score 20-20.
In overtime, on third-and-goal from the 1-yard line, Moroles took a snap and somehow found a way to scoring the winning touchdown.
“It was a lead to me on the right,” Moroles said. “That side got totally blown up, and so I just dove and tried not to lose yards and ended up in the end zone.”
(See highlights of the game online at www.tinyurl.com/pdnMorolesNM.)
That ended up being the final win of Moroles’ career. But despite an epidemic of injuries (Moroles was one of the few who stayed healthy the entire season), Sequim returned to the postseason for the first time in three years.
And the four wins, though not up to par with the Wolves teams that Moroles saw in middle school, marked a significant improvement over the previous two seasons.
“He was a bright spot, for sure; a good leader. He was a big part of the turnaround that we had,” Wiker said.
“It was a medium season, but we were competing — we played three games in overtime.
“Other than [losses to North Kitsap and Olympic] we were in every game, and I think a lot of that had to do with him.”
Moroles’ athletic career will come to a close at this week’s state track and field meet (he’ll run with the Wolves’ 4×400-meter relay team).
This fall, he plans to attend Washington State University, electrical engineering is a possible major.
“I’ll just be a fan,” he said.
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Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
