Sean Toomey-Stout had three interceptions Friday, taking one back 65 yards for a touchdown, as Coupeville throttled Vashon 27-8. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
Coupeville’s line, seen here in an earlier game, played strongly in the win.
For seven long minutes, things looked sort of bleak.
And then, in the matter of a few seconds, the entire script got flipped and what could have been a Friday the 13th horror show became a very-satisfying romp.
Dominant on defense and opportunistic on offense, the Coupeville High School football squad bounced back from an early deficit Friday to whack host Vashon Island 27-8.
The win, fueled by four interceptions and several inspired scoring plays, evens the Wolves record at 1-1 on the season.
It also gives Coupeville’s seniors a sweep of Vashon, as the Class of 2020 went 4-0 against the Pirates, outscoring their fellow islanders 145-47 over that stretch.
In the early going Friday, though, the only team to crack the scoring barrier was Vashon.
And not because it did anything special, but because the Wolves couldn’t get into gear.
While the Coupeville defense forced a three-and-out on the opening possession, with Andrew Martin body-slamming a Pirate runner halfway through the turf on one play, the Wolf offense promptly stalled out.
The first three plays CHS ran resulted in a loss of four yards, an incomplete pass, and a loss of eight yards.
Then, things went from sorta bad to stinky cheese awful, as a snap on fourth down sailed past Wolf quarterback Dawson Houston, resulting in a safety and a quick ‘n easy two points for Vashon.
That triggered the fog horn from Hell that the Pirates fire off to signal when they score, setting up the disturbing possibility the night would be full of the nerve-shredding wail.
But when the football gods give, they often quickly take.
And thus the night turned in a few plays, shutting down the fog horn almost for good, while sending a ripple of electricity through the Wolf faithful who had made the two-boat trek to get from Whidbey to the far outposts of the world.
On Vashon’s ensuing possession, Coupeville defenders Gavin Knoblich and Ben Smith both came up with nice stops for losses, forcing the Pirates to go to the punt formation.
At which point the Vashon long snapper aired the ball out.
Like really, really, really aired it out, skipping it 30 yards past his punter, who took off running, barely getting to the madly-skipping ball before a wave of Wolves rolled right over the top of his prone body.
Handed a gift, Coupeville cashed it in, and quickly.
Freshman Scott Hilborn, making his high school football debut, accepted a hand-off from Houston, cut back, spun on a dime, then bolted through a pack of hapless Pirates, shredding them for a 30-yard bolt to the end zone.
So, that’s one high school carry, and one high school touchdown. Perhaps his nickname shall be “Instant Offense.”
While the Wolves missed on a two-point conversion pass, they had the lead, and it would be one they would never relinquish.
Chalk a big assist up to the defense, which again came up big.
Martin and Gavin St Onge blew up running plays, then Hilborn, trying to do everything all in one night, snuffed out Vashon’s next drive by picking the Pirate QB on a fourth-down heave inside the 20-yard line.
Up high in the stands, proud dad Steve Hilborn, a master of remaining low-key in the heat of competition, nodded.
Once.
Ever so slightly.
And it was like another man ripping off all his clothes and running around the track screaming at the top of his lungs.
With his defense clicking, Houston took control of the Wolf offense and everything started working.
Mixing runs from Martin and Smith, plus a few nifty scrambles by the QB himself, with precision passes that started on Houston’s fingers and ended in Knoblich’s waiting hands, Coupeville slammed the pedal through the metal.
Houston and Knoblich combined for back-to-back touchdowns through the air, the first from 11 yards out, the second from four yards away, wrapped around an interception from Sean Toomey-Stout, and the rout was on.
A two-point conversion run from Houston, in which his line reared up and smacked Vashon’s defense backwards as a unit, made it 14-2.
After Knoblich’s second scoring catch, on which he out-jumped his defender to get to the ball, the Wolves knocked down their first PAT of the season.
It came on a booming kick by freshman Daylon Houston, off a hold by older brother Dawson, a senior, and ended with the two siblings pounding on each other in glee as they returned to the sideline.
“See, they can get along!” said mom Alia with a huge smile.
While the first half was full of offensive highlights, the second was more of a slug-fest, with both defenses clamping down and just a single touchdown coming for either side.
Vashon finally gave its lonely fog horn a chance to step back into the spotlight when Pirate QB William Weber dropped a really pretty 29-yard scoring bomb into the hands of Jack Cunningham.
But, before the last dying gasp of the horn had faded, Coupeville drove a final stake through the heart of the Pirates, blocking the PAT.
Half the line bent on the play, with St Onge coming in from the outside to land on the ball as it tried, unsuccessfully, to leave the ground.
Coupeville had a couple of strong offensive plays in the second half, with Martin running over would-be tacklers, and Smith slashing through open holes for yardage.
Its best play was a 31-yard throw-and-catch in which Dawson Houston nailed Gavin Straub as he ran a route down the far sideline, followed by “G3” rambling over and around would-be tacklers until enough Vashon players finally arrived on scene to gang-tackle him.
But, while it moved the chains after halftime, the Wolf offense couldn’t crack the goal line in the second half.
Not a problem, however.
Toomey-Stout, who suffered a season-ending injury at Vashon as a sophomore, capped his final game against the Pirates by picking off two more passes in the fourth quarter, giving him three for the game.
Pick #3 came when he sprinted from deep in the backfield, launched himself airborne and hauled in a dying duck of a throw as it plummeted to Earth in front of him.
He looked like a center-fielder on a baseball diamond, and a darn good one at that, robbing a batter of a hit.
But while pick #1 was technically perfect, and pick #3 was a dazzler, pick #2 was “The Torpedo” blowing up the whole stadium and laughing as it came down around him.
Vashon was driving and Weber thought he had an open man and … BAM!!!
Toomey-Stout interrupted the flight of the ball, speared it, then went on one of the wilder pick-six runs in recent memory.
Zigging back and forth, he brought the ball back 65 yards, while running about 130, slipping tackles not once, not twice, but 237 times as he caused the Coupeville coaches to collectively lose their freakin’ minds on the sideline.
There were multiple times when he should have been down, multiple times when he seemingly had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and yet kept on churning, kept on pulling off miracle escapes.
It was a modern-day renaissance man painting a masterpiece and using the gridiron as his canvas.
If there was any justice, the Vashon crew would have fired off the fog horn in salute, even though Toomey-Stout doesn’t wear a Pirate uniform.
They didn’t, but, in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
“The Torpedo” and crew will happily accept the victory, with or without a fog horn salute, and move on the next challenge.
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