Coupeville Sports

Red Pride

Coupeville Cows

Son of a coach and younger brother of a legendary quarterback, Noah Roehl grew up on the football practice field at Coupeville High School, building forts out of blocking pads and surviving off of stray orange wedges.

He now runs football and basketball tournaments which honor his father’s legacy, and he stops by to update us on how they went in 2012.

The Tom Roehl Memorial Scholarship will be given out this year to a graduate from Coupeville High School who best exemplifies how athletics have impacted their community service and academic excellence.

This year the scholarship, under the umbrella of the Coupeville Foundation for Coupeville Public Schools, was able to host two events.

We organized the Tom Roehl Turkey Bowl, a flag football tournament, on November 24th with about 18 participants on three different teams. This was the sixth year of the event, but, after a two year hiatus it was restructured into a more wide open format to encourage more participants and a co-ed format.

Additionally, we hosted the Tom Roehl Round-Ball Classic, an all-island basketball tournament. This was the third year of the tournament format, but the sixth year of the Round-Ball Classic.

We were able to raise $1,900 for the scholarship this year, which is the most we have raised.  We have some additional donations that typically come in this week from family and friends who live out of the area and that should bring us up to almost $3,000, which would also be the most we have raised in a single year thus far.

Both events were paired together this year and received significant support from local businesses. The event partner, which provided the necessary funding for all insurance and facility costs, was Windermere Property Management.

Our event sponsors, who help fund the t-shirts and officials fees were Schisel Construction, Harada Physical Therapy and Davido Consulting Group. Finally, our event supporters who helped cover any additional event costs were Ashley’s Design, R&R Tree Service, Sherman Farms, and Island Periodontics and Implants.

The 2012 Tom Roehl Turkey Bowl had about 18 participants on three teams. The teams played round-robin, with each team playing the other two, with a final championship game played at the end.

It was the first year of the 5×5/6×6 style and, while more teams would have been ideal, those that played had a ton of fun. We expect the event to grow over the next few years, similar to the way the Round-Ball Classic has grown.

We didn’t really crown a “Champion” this year as we combined some of the teams for the championship game, but the teams that participated were the Tecmo Super Bowl All-Stars, The Silver Bullets and Rocking Roehl.

The 2012 Tom Roehl Round-Ball Classic was a great success this year. We had six teams playing with a well represented team from South Whidbey and Oak Harbor — both those teams made it to the Semi-Finals.

The tournament started early in the morning and a few teams still had to clean the dust off their shoes from last years event.

With six teams playing, each team played three seeding round games, then based on record and points, were placed into a single elimination tournament.

The “Coupeville Cows”, #1 seed, and “Red Pride” #3 seed, were on opposite sides of the bracket setting up the possibility of a rematch of 2011’s championship game.

The “Oak Town Ballers” were the #4 seed and the “S Double U” were #2. After two play-in games against the “Roehl Machine” and “Two Old Guys and some Young’ins”, “Red Pride” and the “Oak Town Ballers” advanced to the semi-finals vs the “Coupeville Cows” and “S Double U”.

After two hard-fought battles in the semis, a rematch was set.

“Red Pride” won in 2011 after battling back and fourth and pulling away late in the game. This year “Red Pride” pulled ahead from the start of the game and, at one point, held a 14 point lead, but the “Coupeville Cows” climbed back into the game, chipping away at the lead over the final five minutes.

It looked like they might pull out a come from behind victory.

A few key stops and a three pointer from Brad Sherman put the Cows within two points with 10 seconds left. A foul put Michael Vaughn on the free throw line for 1 and 1. He missed the first one, but Nick Sellgren tipped the ball out of the key right back to Vaughn , who sank the follow-up shot.

The Cows tried to get a final shot off but it was too little too late. Red Pride made it two in a row!!