Sunday, September 07, 2003
SILVI IS THE MAN; DAWN OF HS FOOTBALL
I was in front of the TV on a Saturday morning, just minding my own business, and after my mom was watching the “Gardening with Ciscoe” show on KING 5, the “Paul Silvi’s High School Sports Blitz” show came on. I have to give Paul Silvi and the KING 5 Sports department (Greg Bailey and NW Cable News' Michael King as cohorts) a big round of applause for giving this region (though this show is in its fourth season) its first high school sports show that is meaningful. And the damn thing was an hour long today. They had HS football highlights galore, and even showed the highlights for the University/Richland game, on the other side of the state. Two big features were on Kamiak QB Gary Rogers and Spanaway Lake former player and now coach Logan Seelye. Gary Rogers is supposedly nicknamed “The Prototype” because he’s 6’5” and 230. He shows leadership qualities and leads by example. He said “you can’t play football forever; you have to have an education.” I’ll get to this quote shortly. He’d been looked at by Michigan State and what sounded like four other Big Ten schools. So he cares about an education and could go to any of those schools. Where does he want to go to school? Washington State. Go figure. Pick the party school that’s closest. As for Seelye, the time between when he was a player and when he became a coach was all too short. While I was at school in Ellensburg not long ago, the Central football camps were going on. It was at this camp where Seelye was delivered a hit that paralyzed him from the chest down. SpanLake coaches decided to make him an assistant defensive coach. KING’s Michael King did this story for the Blitz, and got a hold of SpanLake assistant coach Brian Corpuz, who was the first to get to Seelye after the hit. Corpuz held Seelye’s hand and said it was like a baby’s hand, which quite frankly sounded eerie, and given the situation, I can see why. Seelye still has dreams of playing football to this day. … The Blitz was broadcasting from Seahawks Stadium, with some sort of WIAA high school kickoff classic going on in the background. One of those deals where there’s four games in three different classifications. The game going on during the broadcast was Elma/Tumwater. Michael King had some halftime highlights, and cleverly noted Elma as the team “in the canary yellow pants.” That’s sly and hilarious at the same time.
As for B-town HS football, it’s different players and the same result, as the Foss Falcons from Tacoma pounded the Bremerton Knights into submission, 58-13. Actually, one look at Chuck Stark’s (an ex-coach of mine) article in the Bremerton Sun says that the Falcons ran circles around the Knights in coach Mike McKnight’s first game at the B-town football helm. He had already functioned as an assistant football coach as well as head baseball coach and math department chair at the school, the latter two of which I underwent his tutelage.
Some excerpts from the article:
The Knights were a step behind all night, especially in the early stages, when plays were slow to develop on offense and defensive players looked like their feet were stuck in cement as Foss players flew by them – or in the instance of bruising fullback David Shephard, ran over them.
McKnight didn’t think his players were a step behind.
“It was more like two and a half steps,” said McKnight, his eyes widening. “I thought we were quicker than that.”
Quick note, as a former player and student of McKnight’s, it’s not hard to imagine his eyes widening when saying this. Hilarious.
McKnight said it was hard to emulate Foss’ speed in practice and his team never adjusted.
He likened it to a jamboree.
“That’s too bad,” he said, “because this one they keep score at.”
In a way, Stark’s article here somewhat surprises me because it didn’t try to be light on the B-town football team for how badly they played and how slow they were. It seemed fairly objective, for better or for worse. Bad football is bad football, and if you’re on the team and that kind of stuff is printed in the paper, you gotta deal with it. I just with the rest of the Sun would react this way to the trials and tribulations of Mariner utility/bench player Willie Bloomquist and UW defensive player Jimmy Newell, and now that I think about it, just about any South Kitsap athlete that’s gotten beyond high school. They’re pretty much immune to criticism from the Sun, and I hate this tendency in the Sun.
As for other local games, none of them were close. Olympic beat Mount Tahoma 42-7, Peninsula beat the crap out of North Mason 60-9, Gig Harbor beat Wilson 25-8 (Rick Neuheisel was scouting at this game for Rainier Beach), and North Kitsap beat Bainbridge 45-19.
As for B-town HS football, it’s different players and the same result, as the Foss Falcons from Tacoma pounded the Bremerton Knights into submission, 58-13. Actually, one look at Chuck Stark’s (an ex-coach of mine) article in the Bremerton Sun says that the Falcons ran circles around the Knights in coach Mike McKnight’s first game at the B-town football helm. He had already functioned as an assistant football coach as well as head baseball coach and math department chair at the school, the latter two of which I underwent his tutelage.
Some excerpts from the article:
The Knights were a step behind all night, especially in the early stages, when plays were slow to develop on offense and defensive players looked like their feet were stuck in cement as Foss players flew by them – or in the instance of bruising fullback David Shephard, ran over them.
McKnight didn’t think his players were a step behind.
“It was more like two and a half steps,” said McKnight, his eyes widening. “I thought we were quicker than that.”
Quick note, as a former player and student of McKnight’s, it’s not hard to imagine his eyes widening when saying this. Hilarious.
McKnight said it was hard to emulate Foss’ speed in practice and his team never adjusted.
He likened it to a jamboree.
“That’s too bad,” he said, “because this one they keep score at.”
In a way, Stark’s article here somewhat surprises me because it didn’t try to be light on the B-town football team for how badly they played and how slow they were. It seemed fairly objective, for better or for worse. Bad football is bad football, and if you’re on the team and that kind of stuff is printed in the paper, you gotta deal with it. I just with the rest of the Sun would react this way to the trials and tribulations of Mariner utility/bench player Willie Bloomquist and UW defensive player Jimmy Newell, and now that I think about it, just about any South Kitsap athlete that’s gotten beyond high school. They’re pretty much immune to criticism from the Sun, and I hate this tendency in the Sun.
As for other local games, none of them were close. Olympic beat Mount Tahoma 42-7, Peninsula beat the crap out of North Mason 60-9, Gig Harbor beat Wilson 25-8 (Rick Neuheisel was scouting at this game for Rainier Beach), and North Kitsap beat Bainbridge 45-19.
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