Spartans stop Chief Sealth in first postseason matchup

Published 9:30 am Saturday, November 8, 2014

The Spartans seem to have cleaned up their act on the gridiron posthaste.

The varsity football squad has unquestionably been playing exponentially better every week for the past month, a trend which continued last Thursday with their second straight victory at home, 47-20, over the visiting Chief Sealth Seahawks.

It was the team’s first game of the postseason. They will play one more time this year, at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7 at home against Bremerton High School.

“I’m happy for the kids,” Spartan Head Coach Andy Grimm said. “That’s what we’re in it for.”

The Spartans led 7-0 in the first quarter and expanded their lead from then on. They would score three touchdowns in the second against Sealth’s one.

Heading into the second half with a commanding lead, Bainbridge refused to let up on the visitors.

In the third quarter, BHS scored two more touchdowns and held Sealth to one.

The visiting team managed a slight comeback in the game’s final quarter, scoring two touchdowns in the fourth, but it was not enough to surmount the Spartan advantage.

BHS was led by quarterback Casey Brink, filling in for an injured Kyle Jackson.

Brink more than rose to the occasion. He finished the game with 14 carries for 144 yards and scored a season record four touchdowns: he ran for three, passed for one.

“He had a shot early in the season when we were alternating, and we went with Kyle [Jackson],” Grimm explained. “He got a shot tonight. Kyle’s got a bad shoulder, they’ve got to reevaluate him on Monday to see if he can play [Friday]. He wants to play, so we’re going to do our best so he gets his shot, but Casey stepped in. He ran hard, rushed for three touchdowns, so it was fun to see him rewarded.”

Several other Spartans put up some points against Sealth as well.

Peter Lindsey managed one touchdown as well as four carries for 38 yards and one solo tackle.

Max Wickline also finished the game with one touchdown (a 65-yard return off an interception) in addition to completing one reception for 14 yards, one carry for nine yards as well as one solo and one assisted tackle.

Team kicker Carter Daniels also contributed one touchdown.

The Spartans’ rushing game showed marked improvement in Friday’s game.

Sam Wysong had nine carries for 67 yards, Ben Fisher finished the night with seven carries for 36 yards, Carter Daniels had eight for 81 yards, Nick Nordberg completed one for 15, Riley Dunn had five for 12 and Eric Jung managed two for 6 yards.

Grimm said that the team still had some work to do on the defensive side, but many players still managed to put up impressive stats.

Sam Roth managed nine solo and three assisted tackles. Glodi Kingombe finished the game with eight solo and two assisted including two sacks. Both Max Thomas and Alex Pickett made four solo tackles while Oskar Dieterich made three solo tackles including one sack.

Niels Summers also managed one solo sacking.

Speaking to the team’s continual improvements of late, Grimm said that he believes the key to the Spartans’ late-season turnaround is simply determination.

“I think it’s sticking with it,” he explained. “I’d like to think that there’s some perseverance there.”

Grimm said that the team’s divisional competition this season had been particularly difficult, and that the Spartans “went through a gauntlet” of extremely difficult competitors early in the year.

There are no easy games you can count on in this division, Grimm said, and added that the team’s schedule had been set by the coaches in the best way possible to assure them every opportunity to play other team’s of similar size and skill as often as possible.

“Our division’s really tough right now,” he said.

“And our hope was, part of the deal when we set our schedule last spring, was looking at that [and] wanting our kids to have opportunities every week. That’s where we’re not rebuilding the program, but building it back up.”

The efforts of coaches and boosters to revitalize the BHS football program are clearly having an effect. Last week’s Youth Night event saw a swath of young players man the sidelines, obviously excited and interested in the game and each one of them a potential future Spartan star. Also, this year saw the return of the Homecoming Parade, a previously annual tradition which had faded away into island lore.

Perhaps the biggest testament to the program’s improvement, however, is the team’s 4-5 record, a gigantic improvement over last year’s 1-9 season.

The numbers don’t lie.

Grimm said that there was a definite drive within the team to finish the year stronger than they began.

“When we got done with Prep there, the seniors had a meeting with the kids and their approach was, ‘Let’s go out there and win the next three,’” he said.

“That’s a realistic goal,” he said, adding that there was no reason the Spartans shouldn’t come out ahead against Bremerton Friday and end the year on a winning streak.

“It’ll be a competitive game,” Grimm said. “It should be, but I like how we’re playing. We got to keep working on defense, keep getting better at tackling, stopping the runs, but I think our offense right now is working on a pretty good level and [so is] our special teams. Tonight, we had kick off returns and an interception return — that was Wickline there — and that helps.”