Coupeville Sports

Dave Ward

We are at war, and it is a war for nothing less than truth, justice and the soul of high school football.

It may only look like a preseason poll in the Everett Herald (http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20120815/BLOG18/120819861), but the current slap-fest between Coupeville and Archbishop Thomas Murphy football fans is good versus evil, and the good guys wear red and black.

ATM, with its refined football pedigree, with its trust fund athletes and its roster of imposing “scholarship” players who look like they’re already suiting up for a college squad, is something to behold. You just have to hold your nose while you behold it.

It is a program that is rotting away from the inside out, proof that money can’t always buy class, brain power or a firm conviction in doing the right thing.

I say there are 47 reasons to detest ATM because 47 is the number of wins Dave Ward brought the program in his four years as head coach. Four straight trips to the 2A semifinals and back-to-back trips to the state final.

And then they knifed a good man in the back.

School officials with no spine gave in to big money donors and shoved the best thing about their program out the door. They hung him out to dry, embarrassed him and refused to stand behind him.

They are cowards and I hope they never come close to smelling a state championship game again.

I know Dave Ward, and he is one the finest coaches to walk the sideline in Washington state. After succeeding a coach who put together an 0-9 season at Oak Harbor High School, Ward made the Wildcats relevant again, held them together and made them competitive at a time when frequent Navy transfers gutted his roster seemingly every season.

Then, when Navy transfers slowed down and he was able to hold a consistent roster together for more than a season, he went out and led OHHS to the biggest victory in Whidbey Island high school history, winning a state title at the 4A level in a game the Wildcats dominated from start to finish.

But it was more than the wins. During all my time at the Whidbey News-Times, I found him to be one of the best coaches I have ever dealt with. He was tough, honest, never dodged a question, always led by example.

He reminded me of the coach at my alma mater, Tumwater (which thumped ATM in the championship game two seasons ago, thank the Lord). That would be one Mr. Sid Otton, the winningest coach in state history and my 9th grade health teacher.

Otton was a mountain of a man who summed up sex ed with three words, “Don’t have sex,” and then returned to his game planning, content in the knowledge that he had just scared at least 79% of the class into celibacy with one baleful glare.

Ward and Otton have different methods, different coaching styles and Otton has won a few more games — though he’s also had a lot more years in the game, dating back to his roots in Coupeville, of all places — but they are cut from the same cloth. They are coaches you can be proud of, teachers who reach young men both in the classroom and on the gridiron.

Ward went to ATM after winning his title in Oak Harbor and he never stopped winning, and winning the right way. And when he did what had to be done and put down an insurrection in his program by a back-stabbing assistant coach in deep with the big bucks donors, the gutless punks at ATM provided no support.

He went in like Gary Cooper in “High Noon” and school officials acted just like the townsfolk in that film, diving under the nearest table and trying not to breathe too loudly.

Ward is now at Sedro-Woolley, and I have no doubt he will be a success once again. The school is lucky to have him.

After the debacle, ATM found a very accomplished coach to fill Ward’s place. He will likely be a winner, especially since the private school has an uncanny ability to give “scholarship” help to the best football players they can “liberate” from other schools.

ATM is ranked 25th in the prestigious MaxPreps nation-wide preseason poll, one of two Washington schools on the list. They’ll probably win the Cascade Conference, and, with a recent surge of votes (are they paying their butlers and maids to vote now?), they seem to have put a stranglehold on the poll.

But all their wins won’t mask the stench coming out of Everett. It takes a lot more than a few blasts of Lysol to clean away the smell when you sell your soul.