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Future Wolves kick off new gridiron season!!

Posted in Football, tagged , , , , on August 27, 2017| 1 Comment »

   Future Wolf QB Logan Downes directs the offense Saturday as Oak Harbor’s youth football league begins a new season. (John Fisken photos)

Fellow Coupeville mercenary Jean-Pascal Edoukou (middle) anchors the line.

Football is back.

The first high school game is still five days away, but the Oak Harbor Youth Football and Cheer League has kicked off.

As photographer John Fisken wandered the sidelines at Ft. Nugent Saturday, he caught two Wolves in Wildcat clothing.

Logan Downes and Jean-Pascal Edoukou were both in action for Oak Harbor’s Junior Gold squad, which was clashing with Sedro-Woolley Blue.

To see everything Fisken shot (purchases support college scholarships for CHS student/athletes) pop over to:

http://www.johnsphotos.net/Sports/OHFCL-2017/2017-08-26-Junior-Gold-vs-Sedro-Blue/

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Mom’s example powers newest Wolf to success!!

Posted in Basketball, Football, tagged , , , , , on August 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Ashton Prats flies for yardage while playing for Oak Harbor last season. (John Fisken photo)

Prats goes up for a bucket during a basketball game. (Submitted photo)

It starts and ends with his mother.

Whether he’s on the football field or basketball court, in the classroom or tackling everyday life, Ashton Prats always has his heart set on making the woman who brought him into the world proud.

“My mom has fought through the hardest of times to make sure I had a roof over my head, dinner on the table,” Prats said. “She has made sure that I know things don’t get easy until they’re done being hard.

“I respect her so much as a person and as my mother,” he added. “Without her I wouldn’t have the self drive I do today to keep bettering myself on and off the field every day.”

Prats recently transferred from Oak Harbor and will be a junior at Coupeville High School when the new school year begins.

“I decided to switch about halfway through summer because I thought it would be more beneficial academically,” he said.

Having started playing football in the fifth grade, Prats is a veteran on the gridiron, and one who already has some connection with the Wolves.

And by connection, we mean he ran over them during a JV game last season, when he bolted for three touchdowns on the ground and almost got a fourth one on a 74-yard interception return.

Now, he’ll be wearing red, black and white instead of purple and gold, and hopes to help Coupeville in whatever way he can.

“I think my strengths are helping other players, tackling, and power running,” Prats said. “My goals for the season are to better myself as a player and to help the team make it to a championship.

“I also want to observe my teammates and see how they play, so I can play more efficiently with them.”

Prats, who also played basketball for Oak Harbor, enjoys “spending time with my girlfriend, playing pick-up basketball and hanging out with my friends.”

He hails “The Blind Side” as a top movie pick, and red is his favorite color — which fits nicely with his new school.

As he works with his new teammates, Prats remembers how it all began, and what drives him.

“I started playing because I’ve always loved watching football, so I wanted to play,” he said. “I enjoy going through hard times and good times with the team, through winning and losing streaks, and watching all our hard work pay off on Friday nights.”

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Gridiron warriors plan for playoff push!!

Posted in Football, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Senior Jake Hoagland will be a key target for Wolf QB Hunter Downes as he chases school passing records. (John Fisken photos)

Senior Julian Welling returns to anchor the CHS lines.

   Wolf junior Matt Hilborn will share carries with Sean Toomey-Stout and Chris Battaglia.

Play for the postseason.

That’s the goal for the Coupeville High School football team, which wants to shed recent history and make a run at the playoffs.

“Our team goal is to play an 11th game,” said CHS coach Jon Atkins. “If we do that, we will have made many of our other goals on the way.”

To reach the postseason, the Wolves need to finish in the top two in the eight-team Olympic/Nisqually League.

With defending league champ Cascade Christian “returning basically every player for a team that went 10-0 last year heading into the playoffs,” it’s likely the other seven schools will be waging war for the #2 seed.

Last year that playoff berth went to Port Townsend, but the RedHawks took substantial hits in the off-season.

Quarterback Berkley Hill, the league’s top offensive player, graduated, then Detrius Kelsall, a three-year two-way starter who was expected to be the focal point of the offense in 2017, suddenly moved to California.

Still, the RedHawks have talent, especially sophomore Noa Montaya, a defensive whiz kid who inherits the QB job, and won’t go down without a fight.

Klahowya also took a big hit thanks to graduation, while Coupeville returns almost all of its primary weapons.

Last year, in the first year of a two-year trial period for mashing together the four-team Olympic and Nisqually Leagues for football, the Wolves finished 3-7 overall, 2-5 in league play.

CHS beat South Whidbey in non-conference play, whacked Vashon Island and Chimacum inside the league and came within a single play of unseating Charles Wright Academy and Bellevue Christian.

As the Wolves seek their first winning record since 2005, they have a favorable schedule.

Six of their 10 games are on Whidbey — five home games, including three of the final four, and the season opener vs. South Whidbey at Langley — and they don’t play Cascade Christian until the final game of the regular season.

With many of the league’s teams unsettled a bit, opportunity is there.

“I think that both Bellevue Christian and Charles Wright are looking to turn the corner and Port Townsend is always a tough match-up,” Atkins said. “The league is going to look very different than last year with the graduation of a lot of seniors in other programs. So it should be a fun season.”

Coupeville’s strengths should be its passing attack and defensive backfield, where the team boasts a pack of veterans with extensive varsity experience.

Senior quarterback Hunter Downes is back under center after a strong junior campaign.

Avoiding the injuries which derailed his sophomore season, Downes threw for 1,569 yards (#5 among 1A QB’s) and 17 touchdowns, one off of the school single-season mark.

Heading into his final year at the controls of the Wolf offense, he sits 1,773 yards and 16 TD’s from breaking the school career records, which are held by Coupeville’s Offensive Coordinator, Brad Sherman.

Downes top two targets in 2016 are also back, as Hunter Smith (49 receptions for school single-season records of 916 yards and 11 TD’s) and Cameron Toomey-Stout (21-441) return for their senior seasons.

Toss in speed demon sophomore Sean Toomey-Stout (2-52), steady senior Jake Hoagland (2-17) and junior Chris Battaglia (1-9), and Coupeville returns five of the eight players to have at least one catch last year.

Smith, who already owns at least a part of four CHS football game or season records, sits just 11 yards and five TD’s from moving past ’80s star Chad Gale to become the school’s career leader in those categories.

It could be a season of milestones for Smith, as he’s also just three interceptions away from passing Josh Bayne for that career mark.

When Downes isn’t pegging passes to his receivers, he’ll be handing the ball off to the three-headed beast of junior Matt Hilborn, Sean Toomey-Stout and Battaglia.

Opening holes for them will be a line anchored by senior Julian Welling and juniors Dane Lucero and Jake Pease.

Younger players who Atkins expects to step up include sophomores Trevor Bell, Gavin Knoblich and Andrew Martin, as well as junior Shane Losey, who “looks good returning from a shoulder injury on the defensive side of the ball.”

With its veteran players in place, Coupeville is primed to have a potent offense.

“Returning Hunter Downes, Cameron and Hunter Smith is going to make it difficult for teams to take just one weapon away,” Atkins said. “We just have to take care of the ball better and minimize mistakes on offense.”

The key to the team’s success and its playoff hopes will largely hinge on the defensive side of the ball, a weak point in many ways for Coupeville last season.

“Defensively we have to be better at making the first tackle and not giving opposing teams extra opportunities for yards,” Atkins said. “We gave up just over 30 points a game last year and for us to make our goals we have to improve on this area to get to an 11th game.”

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“We will be back!!”

Posted in Football, tagged , , , , on August 22, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Michael Golden

It was a tough decision, but family had to come first.

Michael Golden, who was hired this off-season to be an assistant football coach at Coupeville High School, is not on the field with the Wolves as they plow through the first week of fall practice.

Instead, he, his wife and their two sons, have returned to Alabama.

Golden’s grandparents, and several other family members, have substantial health issues, and as the oldest grandson, he wanted to be a rock for his family.

“It was a difficult decision. All of our family is in Alabama, but it was like we had a family here in Coupeville as well,” Golden said.

“We will return to visit and I hope at some point we’ll back in Coupeville for good.”

After he and his family moved to Whidbey Island last year, Golden worked as an assistant under Bob Martin with the Coupeville Middle School gridiron squad.

With his oldest son, Cade, entering his freshman year of football, Golden was set to jump up a rung alongside him.

“I really like the direction they’re going in,” Golden said. “I like (CHS Athletic Director) Willie (Smith) and the high school staff and Bob has been like a brother to me.”

With the family in Alabama, Cade, the starting QB during his time at Coupeville Middle School, is taking snaps at Pell City High School, his dad’s alma mater.

He’s doing so in weather which is miles away from what the family experienced in Washington state, with 92 degrees and “a lot of humidity” being the order of the day Tuesday in the deep South.

“We miss the Coupeville weather!,” Michael Golden said with a laugh.

Back in Coupeville, the decision of how to fill the open coaching job is still up in the air.

Josh Welshans, who previously helped with the CHS baseball squad, has been working as a volunteer football coach and could be an option.

“We are still deciding,” Wolf head coach Jon Atkins said. “Josh is on staff and his role might expand. The administration and I have been discussing options at this point.”

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Big man, big legend!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, Football, Track, Where are they now?, tagged , , , , , on August 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Jeff and Cindy Rhubottom. (Contributed photos)

   A flashback to the days when Rhubottom terrorized Wolf rivals on the hardwood.

   The socks were extraordinary, and so was their ability to put the ball in the hoop.

“Respect yourself. Respect your school.”

Jeff Rhubottom was one of the best athletes to ever walk the hallways of Coupeville High School, and he lived by that credo.

A 6-foot-4 tower of power, the 1978 Wolf grad was a 12-time letter winner (four times each in football, basketball and track and field), a two-time All-Conference hoops player and the school record holder in the high jump for more than a decade.

While fellow football player Rich Wilson (6-4) nipped Rhubottom’s mark (6-2) in 2000 — and retains the school record 17 years later — Rhubottom’s legacy still looms large.

He torched the basketball nets for 459 points his senior season in 1977-1978, the second-best single-season mark ever put up a Wolf, boy or girl.

Over the course of four seasons, while sharing the ball with some of the biggest scorers and sweetest shooters in CHS hoops history, he finished with 1,012 points.

In 100 seasons of Wolf boys basketball, only Jeff Stone (1137), Mike Bagby (1104) and Rhubottom contemporary Randy Keefe (1088) have topped that.

While he enjoyed his other sports (he was a tight end/outside linebacker in football and a sprinter, relay runner and state meet-qualifying high jumper on the track oval), basketball was always Rhubottom’s favorite.

“Making the starting five on the varsity squad in basketball my sophomore year” was a particular highlight, which allowed him to “play with great athletes like Bill Jarrell, Randy Keefe, Marc Bisset and Foster Faris.”

That unit played for legendary CHS coach Bob Barker, a man who had a huge positive impact on Rhubottom.

“Coach Barker (was a favorite) for his professionalism,” Rhubottom said. “I remember him quoting as he was handing out our red blazers, ‘You’re representing yourself as an athlete and you’re representing Coupeville High School’.”

CHS football coach Pat Lippincott and track guru Craig Pedlar (“great teacher, great coach”) also helped shaped the young Rhubottom into the man he became.

“Coach Pedlar brought Michael Ellsworth, Jeff Fielding, and myself to the State A Finals in Yakima in 1978,” Rhubottom said. “It was great to be involved with great athletes of the school.

“It’s what you did on Friday nights.”

Whether it was standing tall at the state tourney or ripping through the line to block a punt against Concrete, before scooping up the loose ball and taking it to the house for a touchdown, Rhubottom played with passion, for himself and his teammates.

“I loved and respected the athletic program, playing with great athletes in a small town.”

The lessons he learned as a Wolf benefited Rhubottom as he went on to build his own family (he has a son, Jeff, Jr.) and a career in the painting business.

“Working hard and being responsible and trying to stay in the best physical shape as the years go by. Keeping active,” have been his guiding principals.

Rhubottom considers himself “totally blessed,” having been married to Cindy, “the most beautiful, loving wife, mother, and grandmother” until she lost her battle with cancer in September, 2016.

Being “surrounded by loving new and old family” has helped him greatly.

As he looks back at his own career, Rhubottom calls on today’s Wolves to seize the day.

“Respect yourself. Respect your school. Give 110%. Enjoy the experience,” he said. “Have fun, because it goes by quick.

“Keep active. Always love the sport,” Rhubottom added. “It was fun to take a trip down memory road of my athletic career at Coupeville High School. These are memories I will cherish forever.”

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