Ben Smith rushed for two touchdowns and picked off a pair of passes Saturday as Coupeville football closed its season with a 29-0 win. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
They saved their best offensive show for the finale.
Scoring a season-high four touchdowns Saturday, while also collecting their third shutout on defense, the Coupeville High School football team blasted visiting Concrete 29-0.
The win over their Northwest 2B/1B League foe gave a great sendoff to the team’s four seniors — who scored all the TD’s — while also clinching a second-straight winning season for the Wolf gridiron program.
Finishing 3-2 in a pandemic-shortened season, this year’s CHS squad follows on the heels of the 2019 group, which went 5-4.
While back-to-back campaigns in which they won one more game than they lost doesn’t guarantee any state title banners will be hung any time soon, it is a huge step forward for a program which didn’t have a winning season between 2006-2018.
Wolf coach Marcus Carr, who has been at the helm for three seasons now, paid tribute to seniors Alex Jimenez, Sage Downes, Dakota Eck, and Ben Smith for their contributions to the rebuilding.
“Very happy with the way the guys played this season,” Carr said. “Our seniors shined tonight and they set the tone for us all year.”
Seniors (l to r) Sage Downes, Smith, Dakota Eck, and Alex Jimenez spend the final moments of their prep careers with coach Marcus Carr. (Jackie Saia photo)
That four-pack of 12th graders made an impact right from the start Saturday night.
Playing in front of their home fans for the first time in a month, they forced three-and-out sequences the first two times Concrete touched the ball.
Jimenez came crashing through the line on a fourth-and-four to drag down a ball-carrier short of the line on the opening “drive,” and the mood was set.
While Coupeville’s defense has been strong all season, its offense has taken its sweet time about scoring most games.
Not so against Concrete, as the Wolves busted off a march to the promised land midway through the first quarter.
Freshman quarterback Logan Downes hit Jimenez and Daylon Houston with quicksilver passes, wrapped around a strong run up the middle by Smith.
That loosened up the Concrete defense, and Smith promptly took advantage, bursting through a mass of would-be tacklers, then outrunning the Lions to the end zone on a 20-yard scoring tear.
While the PAT refused to be converted, it didn’t really matter as the Wolves continued to jump all over their foes.
Smith pilfered a Lions pass on the next possession, his first of two picks, which set up a unique scoring play.
Getting one year together on the high school football field, the second and third of Angie Downes three sons made it count, hooking up on a 28-yard touchdown pass.
Logan, the confident young gun, lofted a pass from right to left, the ball dropping out of the sky right onto the fingertips of moderately-old Sage, who strolled in for the score.
Somewhere, Hunter, their now very-old (relatively speaking) older brother, who still holds some Coupeville QB records, probably nodded and said to anyone in ear shot, “You realize I taught them everything about football.”
Houston knocked the extra point through the goalposts, then returned shortly thereafter to do the same again, this time after Smith bolted in for a score from nine yards out early in the second quarter.
Up 20-0 at the halftime break — that time when PA announcer Willie Smith and clock operator Joel Norris go cookie-hunting — the Wolves coasted in from there, relying on a series of big defensive plays to keep Concrete at bay.
Jimenez spent much of the night harassing anyone in a Lions uniform who dared to come close to the ball, the same as Isaiah Bittner and Josh Upchurch, while Sage Downes and Scott Hilborn picked off passes.
Smith snagged his second INT, this one on an eye-popping play where he hauled in the ball with one hand while tip-toeing down the sideline, just barely staying in play.
Tim Ursu busted off a nice run to keep the Concrete defense honest, but it was Eck who tore off a 46-yard run to the end zone in the fourth quarter for the season’s final touchdown.
Before that, Houston showed off the power of his big kicking leg, absolutely crushing a 26-yard field goal.
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