Making his first start as a varsity QB Friday, Dawson Houston tossed two TD passes as Coupeville drilled Port Townsend 28-18. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Ryan Labrador relaxes with some sweet, sweet victory cake. (Erin Straub photo)
Sean Toomey-Stout (left), Jake Pease (30) and Shane Losey combined to score four touchdowns. (Pam Pease photo)
It was just one win, maybe, but it felt like more than that.
Much more.
With 16 players in uniform, and every one of them making an impact, the Coupeville High School football squad kicked off a new season, under a new coaching staff, by slaying the beast which has haunted their gridiron dreams in recent years.
Five straight losses to Port Townsend, dating back to 2014, by a combined score of 270-32, was rough to endure.
But a lot of that evaporated in a mighty roar Friday, as the Wolves jumped, danced, and then hustled to the ferry on foot, celebrating a 28-18 win in which they never trailed and thoroughly dominated.
It made a winner of new coach Marcus Carr and his staff, and was the first time the CHS football squad had topped the RedHawks since Sept. 26, 2014.
After that win came blowout loss after blowout loss against Port Townsend, including three consecutive shutouts.
Those days are done, however.
CHS might not have been perfect on opening night — how many teams are? — but the Wolves played inspired ball, refused to bend, and put the hammer down when it mattered most.
Dawson Houston made a huge splash in his first-ever start as a varsity QB, Alex Turner ripped heads off and let the bodies hit the floor, Gavin Straub showed off the softest hands in the stadium, and that was just the start.
Though towering over them all was Sean Toomey-Stout, back after missing the final five games of his sophomore year with a devastating injury.
Showing no rust, no fear and no mercy, “The Torpedo” annihilated his foes.
200+ yards and two touchdowns as a rusher.
An interception in which he leaped out of the stadium to spear the ball.
Kickoff returns in which the only way the RedHawks could stop him from taking it to the house was to grab his shirt tail and hold on for dear life until Toomey-Stout’s jersey ripped nearly in half.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning.
The game started with two strong Coupeville defensive stands in which it forced punts, packaged around one of the few Wolf mistakes, a botched hand-off that led to a fumble and turnover.
Handed the ball back a second time, after a godawful RedHawk pooch punt that Wolf lineman Isaiah Bittner boldly jumped onto, CHS settled down.
Toomey-Stout ripped off runs of 12 and 19 yards, while Andrew Martin lowered his head and bloodied some noses on a bull-run that shoved the PT defense all the way back to the ferry line.
That set up Houston’s first pass of the season, a sweet hook-up with Shane Losey for 27 yards on 4th and 11.
Houston dropped the ball into a tiny crack between defenders, and Losey (who the road announcers kept calling Loosey all night…) did the rest.
Snatching the ball out of mid-air, he juggled it, then pulled it safely into his chest as he bounced off the ground.
Cradling the ball like it was an egg ready to hatch, he landed right in front of a ref who seemed genuinely surprised to see the play completed without the ball squirting loose.
Once could be a fluke, but twice is the start of a beautiful partnership.
Houston then spun a 12-yard TD strike into the right corner of the end zone, where Losey pulled the lob in while in mid-stride.
A botched extra point that went a millimeter low and caught the crossbar before skipping away kept the score at 6-0, but it was first blood in a game in which the Wolves would never trail.
Port Townsend missed on its first chance to tie, when Toomey-Stout, bouncing like a kangaroo jacked up on Red Bull, went airborne and picked off a potential TD pass right outside the end zone.
While the RedHawks finally did break through, netting a 10-yard scoring strike with 46 ticks left in the half, Coupeville’s defense stood strong, stuffing the two-point conversion run.
The game might have been knotted 6-6 at the half, but as the teams exited the field, the difference in energy between the two squads was easy to see.
Cue the second-half KO, as Toomey-Stout came out of the locker room with the swagger of Mike Tyson in his prime.
“The Torpedo” took the opening kick back up the right side, tripped up at the very last second by Port Townsend’s kicker, who laid out to save the touchdown.
For about five seconds.
Very next play, Toomey-Stout bolted up the middle for his first TD run of the season, a 10-yard jaunt that he covered in about three steps as mom Lisa came unglued, perhaps permanently damaging her vocal cords as she out-screamed the entire Port Townsend fan base by herself.
A two-point conversion pass from Houston to Gavin Knoblich was huge, stretching the lead back out to 14-6, and the early score, coming in less than 14 seconds off the third-quarter clock, set the tone for the rest of the game.
Port Townsend rallied to within 14-12 on a miracle run by its freshman quarterback, who slipped through 327 tackles on one play, on fourth down, but the RedHawks could never get the equalizer.
The hosts botched the two-point conversion, had a potential touchdown ripped away later when Toomey-Stout chased down a runner from behind, passing three of his own teammates as he came close to matching twin sister Maya’s gazelle-like speed, and couldn’t stop Coupeville when it mattered.
Houston connected with Jake Pease on a 10-yard TD strike — set up by a 56-yard run from Toomey-Stout — then “The Torpedo” closed out Coupeville’s scoring with a 42-yard TD jaunt.
His final scoring run was made possible by his teammates successfully recovering a short kick by the RedHawks with five minutes to play.
It wasn’t a straight-up onside kick, but close, as Port Townsend tried to bounce the ball off of a CHS player and recover.
Instead, Straub timed the ball perfectly, pulled it in, and went to the ground, never bobbling it even as he was mobbed by the RedHawks.
G-3 not only earned the “good hands” award, he netted a huge high-five from Wolf assistant coach Kwamane Bowens as he exited the field.
In a game in which the Wolf offense broke things open with big plays, the defense had the final statement as Knoblich and Dane Lucero delivered spleen-rupturing sacks.
While Toomey-Stout was pasting anyone who got close, linemen Matt Stevens, Ryan Labrador, Martin, Turner, Pease and Co. thoroughly clogged things up, repeatedly gang-tackling the RedHawk runners into submission.
Toss in a fairly spectacular throw by the Wolf cheerleaders at the very end, in which Mica Shipley seemingly exploded out of a cannon, touched the overcast skies, then dropped back into the waiting embrace of her teammates, and the night belonged to Coupeville.
All that was missing was a dance party, and, by the time the Wolves and their fans were back in the CHS parking lot, sure enough, one was starting.
It might be early, but undefeated is undefeated, and slaying the beast is a heck of a way to kick things off.
