Coupeville Sports

Sean Modun, a beast back in ’87, and one of the guys who kick-started THS football into state championship territory.

ATM is dead. Long live the real dynasties.

A week after dismantling the Mildcats, Tumwater High School’s football squad, and my 9th grade health teacher (AKA the state’s winningest coach in history, Sid Otton) play tonight in the state semifinals against Prosser. Win there and they advance to face Lynden, which handily erased Capital 48-21 Friday.

Otton and Co. are seeking their 6th state title, and it would be a titanic battle between 12-1 schools which have won the last four 2A titles (Lynden in 2011, 2009, 2008 and Tumwater in 2010).

Actually, the three schools still standing have accounted for the last six 2A champs, with Prosser winning the title in 2007 and Lynden in 2006.

The battle in Spokane tonight pits schools which each won three state titles at the 3A level. The T-Birds won three in four years (’87, ’89, ’90), then won another at the 4A level in ’93, before the school was split into two, creating Black Hills High School. Since then, Tumwater has been a 2A school.

Prosser took advantage of the T-Birds moving out of their division and made a statement in the ’90s, with big wins in ’92, ’93 and ’99.

The ’87 Tumwater squad featured the studs of my youth — guys like Sean Modun and Larry Quartano. In later years, it was funny to watch Anthony Hicks, a little kid everyone in our neighborhood used to pound on playing no-pad tackle football in his family’s yard, take the field and decimate defenders in ’93 as a suddenly muscular high school star.

Now, the T-Bird quarterback is Jayden Croft, a junior who is one of Coach Otton’s grandsons. Which means he’s the son of Tana Otton, the THS volleyball coach (who has won a few state titles herself), who was … a freshman … when I was a senior.

And that’s the thing about Tumwater. The players change, but the same names keep popping up year after year. It is a tradition, a NGUNNGU-based holy religion in that town. A new batch of 170-pound kids who commit fully to the Never Give Up, Never Never Give Up mantra that the soft-spoken head man has preached for decades and then shock the world of 270-pound wannabes time after time.

A little belief (and a LOT of hard work) goes a long way. All the way to possibly six state titles.

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       Two unexpected things from 2012 — the bacon sundae and King’s High School losing a football game.

Saturday was a day of upsets.

In college football, both #1 (Kansas State) and #2 (Oregon) fell, throwing the BCS into a tizzy. Meanwhile, in the rain and muck of that godforsaken town known as Aberdeen, the pride of the Cascade Conference, unbeaten King’s, was shocked 17-7 by Montesano, knocking the Knights out of the state playoffs in the 1A quarterfinals.

All-everything quarterback Billy Green hurt himself on the second play of the game, hitting his throwing hand on a helmet.

Whether the injury, the rain, or the swarming defense bothered him most, he struggled like never before, completing just nine of 31 passes. He also threw two interceptions as King’s was held scoreless in the first half.

Coming a day after Archbishop Thomas Murphy was decimated 21-0 by Tumwater in the 2A playoffs, the loss guaranteed no team from Coupeville’s league will win a state title this season.

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