Bulldog battle storm, Warden to advance to quarterfinals

Colfax Bulldogs return to the playoff turf of Lampson Stadium in Kennewick Friday night to face White Swan in the state quarter-final round. The Bulldogs will make the trip after grinding out a 22-7 win over Warden in the first playoff round at Colfax last Friday.

Coach Andy Bush and his White Swan squad will arrived at Kennewick with an 8-3 record after taking out DeSales 34-20 in round one of the playoffs. They are on a seven-game win streak after sustaining losses early in the season.

Coach Bush led the Garfield/Palouse Vikings to two straight state championships in 1986 and 1987. Both championship wins were over Crescent. The Vikings’ record for those two years is 23-2.

Colfax Friday defeated Warden and terrible playing conditions. Steady wind driven by rain made players and fans from both sides miserable and field conditions too soft for anything but the basics.

“When you play in conditions like that, you just have to change your game plan and go with what will work,” Coach Mike Morgan said.

The Bulldogs shut down a lot of their play book and stuck with a basic ground control game. They scored two TDs early and than launched a fourth-quarter drive to cap the win.

“I felt most of the scoring would be early in the game,” Morgan noted.

Defense was credited with making the difference. Warden’s rushing game finished in the negative, minus 12 yards on 14 carries. The Cougars finished with 97 yards in the air.

Alvin Li scored the first two Colfax TDs in the first quarter, one on a run of 11 yards and one on a three-yard cruncher. Li finished with 18-80 for the night.

Warden answered with a swing pass to Adam Hanson who made a pivot move in front of the Colfax bench and went all the way for a score. Hanson, who anchored Warden on offense and defense rambled 58 yards for a score.

“It’s really the only mistake we had all night,” Morgan noted.

The 14-7 Colfax lead held up in the second half when players endured even more miserable conditions. Warden had its best shot at bumping the Bulldogs midway in the fourth quarter when a dropped punt attempt gave the Cougars the ball 16-yards short of the Colfax end zone. They also had the wind and the rain at their backs.

Morgan called a timeout at that juncture and told the Bulldog defenders to just do what they had been doing all night. That resulted in a four-and-out to end the Warden threat.

With ball possession the main aim, Colfax decided to give the ball to Jaime Bledsoe. He charged through a crease in the Warden defense and rumbled all the way to scoring range. Bledsoe finished the drive with the third Colfax TD and ran for another two points for the 22-7 gap.

Bledsoe finished as the top running back for the Bulldogs with 87 yards on nine carries. Most of that came in his fourth-quarter campaign.

“He literally carried people while he was going down the field,” Coach Morgan noted.

The final rushing stat for the Bulldogs was 241 yards in 54 attempts. In normal playing conditions, that mark would rate a mundane; but in Friday’s playing conditions it rates as outstanding.

Coach Bush will bring in a Warden team which features Tony Picard, a 6-3 back who tops 300 pounds. Picard is the hammer for the Cougars with Alex Sampson and Niko Nanez as the backs to crank up the yards on the outside part of the Cougars’ attack.

Nanez had three of the White Swan TDs last week against a DeSales team which booked a win in non-league action against the same White Swan team at the start of the season.

Colfax is one of three teams from last week’s NE crossover to advance to the quarter-finals with wins over the mid-staters. Waitsburg/Prescott remained undefeated with a 48-7 won over Brewster, and Lind/Ritzville/Sprague stopped Manson 34-7. The Cardinals and Broncos, who play Saturday in Pasco, and the winner will face the Colfax-White Swan winner in the semis.