Coupeville Sports

Caleb Valko (63) prepares to launch himself into the fray. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

Caleb Valko is going to kick your butt.

That’s just a fact for anyone who chooses to line up opposite the Coupeville High School senior lineman this season.

You need to find a soft spot on the field and make room for when you fall, because you’re going to go down, probably hard.

As part of a rock-solid group of linemen at the core of the Wolf squad, a unit that also includes fellow beasts of the gridiron like Anthony Maggio and Nick Streubel, Valko is the furthest thing from a dirty player possible.

What he is instead is every coach’s dream — a two-way player who will go hard from kickoff through the game’s final seconds.

“With this being my senior year, I will play with no regrets,” Valko said. “From the first whistle to the last, good luck to my opponents. You don’t stand a chance.”

Number 63 will blast upwards from his starting job at both center and defensive end, opening holes for fleet-footed Coupeville runners such as Jake Tumblin and Danny Savalza and then crushing the hopes and dreams of the opposing team’s skills players.

It’s grunt work, work that needs to be done, and work that, unfortunately, sometimes gets overlooked when the headlines are typed.

“We are a small school. We don’t play normal football — we play iron man ball,” Valko said. “The only reason the backs and quarterbacks get glory is because we linemen do the dirty work.

“The stuff that nobody sees or wants to do. Without us, you can’t win games. It’s simply not possible.”

With a solid line clearing the way for the wing-t offense brought in by first-year head coach Tony Maggio, the Wolves are primed to roll up some yards.

With an easier schedule than in years past — Archbishop Thomas Murphy, Lakewood and Cedarcrest have been replaced by schools much closer in size to Coupeville — the hope is to reclaim a winning feeling.

“I think that it (the schedule change) was mainly a confidence booster to the younger kids, not having to play the elite 2A schools,” Valko said. “For me and my other upperclassmen, we could care less who we are playing.

“We are gonna scrap and fight you till the last whistle blows.

“Like anybody else I want to win,” he added. “As a team I think we all are expecting at least playoffs; we have too much talent for anything else.

“But we also need to learn our new offense. Not worry about the trick plays and perfect the fundamentals.”

And if he has to knock some people on their butts along the way, that’s just the way it goes when you’re working in the trenches.