BHS suffers 28-0 shutout in season’s first football outing

Published 3:17 pm Friday, September 11, 2015

The sizzle surrounding the Spartans’ return to the field fizzled out quickly in Friday’s debut football faceoff, a non-conference game against defending Olympic League 2A champions and perpetual team rivals North Kitsap High at home.

It was the first time in at least two seasons that the year’s first game had been played on the island.

The Bainbridge High varsity squad found themselves trailing early, 6-0 after the first quarter, unable to mount a comeback and ultimately bested 28-0.

“They stymied us a bit,” said Spartan Head Coach Andy Grimm of NK’s strong line performance. “So you’ve got to kind of learn from that.”

The visitors scored once in the first quarter, leading 6-0 going into the second, where the hurt really began for the Spartans. NK added another 22 points to the board before the half, with BHS still unable to mount a response.

The Spartans did, however, manage to hold the visitors scoreless in the second half, which saw play proceed at times at a glacial speed with no apparent advantage gained by either side. No points were scored in the second half.

The Spartans managed 10-for-22 in passing for a total of 70 yards gained throughout the game. They totaled 30 runs for 81 yards.

NK saw four fumbles throughout Friday’s game and BHS suffered three.

Defensively, the Spartans fared better and enjoyed several strong performances.

Sam Roth, Alec Pickett, Nick Nordberg and Sam Wysong each managed seven solo tackles and at least one assist apiece. Nordberg also managed one interception for a gain of 25 yards. Devon Tuner completed four solo tackles and two assists, including the Spartans’ sole sack of the night for a Viking loss of eight yards.

It was a night of hard lessons for BHS, Grimm said.

NK earned the win, but it was the Spartans’ mistakes which let the game get out of hand.

The true game score, he said, would read differently.

“We helped them out,” he said. “We just had trouble against their defense. It’s a good defense.” The mistakes the Spartans let slip, he added, “those are back breakers.”

Of course, it’s commonly accepted that the largest improvement a team will make in a season is between the first and second game, and Grimm said that the players and officials were determined not to let this initial setback set the tone for the year.

It’s not so bad, he told the team. Now’s the time to go to work.

“I’m just trying to build positives with them,” he said. “Try to look at [and] take those [errors] out, and where were we in that game? It’s probably a legit 14-0.”

Working through adversity and disappointment, Grimm said, is an essential lesson in life, and one that he aspires to integrate into the team’s training. “We build that mentality,” he said. “Come [back] tomorrow and learn and you’ve got to move on. I try to insert that as a life skill, because you have to do that at life.

“You have a crappy day at work or whatever it is, your boss isn’t treating you nice or whatever [and] you’ve got to be able to deal with it and figure out how I’m going to make this better,” Grimm said.

How do the Spartans make it better now?

Play by play, Grimm said.

“What we do as as staff before they come in is we try to pull out plays that we did well on and where we made mistakes that we’ve got to correct,” he said. “They had a couple of times when they got over the 50 and we held — and that’s what you build on. You have to.

”At no time can any of the players or coaches allow themselves to get defeated, Grimm said.

“You never want to do that,” he said. “You’re their leader, right? That’s how I expect myself to act and that’s how I expect my staff to act, that we’re going to come back [and] figure out what to do.”

The Spartans will play at home again at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11 against Cleveland High before hitting the road to face off against Everett on Saturday, Sept. 19.

BHS will then host Ingraham Friday, Sept. 25.