Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
SJE defenders Mathew Logen (51) and his brother Jonathan Logen attempt to put a stop on DeSales QB Bobby Holtzinger.
The final week of the regular season for Southeast 1B league football is here, with top teams looking to secure playoff seeds as others vie for a chance to keep playing. Lyle/Wishram, Tekoa/Rosalia and Pomeroy hold the top three spots with Colton and Sunnyside Christian still in consideration for a potential fourth playoff berth.
The two teams play at Sunnyside Thursday night at 7 p.m.
Lyle/Wishram 64
Tekoa/Rosalia 36
Tekoa/Rosalia played at Lyle – just across the Columbia River from The Dalles – Nov. 1 and got a glimpse of Eastern Washington University future. Lyle/Wishram senior running back Brandon Montoya, committed to play in Cheney next year, ran loose in a game between the top two teams in the Southeast 1B league.
"He was just so tough for us to deal with," said TR Coach Jay Scholz. "We knew that going in, but I thought our offense might be able to keep up more."
First-place Lyle/Wishram will now play third-place Pomeroy in the last week of regular season games. If LW wins, they take the league championship, if they lose, a three-way tie results between Lyle/Wishram, Tekoa/Rosalia and Pomeroy. A tie-breaker game would then need to be played.
Tekoa/Rosalia (7-2, 6-1 league) will finish the regular season at Toppenish Saturday at 1 p.m. against Yakama Tribal.
Pomeroy 62
Colton 0
Colton took the bus to Pomeroy last Friday with 10 players and the Pirates dominated.
Quarterback Brandon Bales ran for 251 yards and three touchdowns, and passed for another, while Trent Gwinn rushed for 101 yards and three Pomeroy touchdowns. He scored one more on a 68-yard pass from Bales.
Colton quarterback Chris Wolf led the Wildcats with 125 yards rushing on a night the team was without two players gone to FFA Nationals – Trent Druffel and Jackson Meyer.
"Pomeroy's a good team. They're getting better every year," said Colton Coach Jim Moehrle.
The Wildcats' record stands at 3-5 (3-4 league), still with a shot at the playoff grid if they beat Sunnyside Christian (4-5, 3-4 league).
"We need to win Thursday for sure, no matter what," said Moerhle of playoff implications.
The final Southeast 1B regular season games are played on a Thursday to allow coaches to scout other regional playoff teams – and to have time for a tie-breaker game to be played on Monday, if needed (though the Tekoa/Rosalia game Saturday at Yakama Tribal pushes that).
DeSales 64
St. John/Endicott/ LaCrosse 6
Rich Hallenius' phone rang Tuesday night just before 8 o'clock.
His St. John/Endicott/LaCrosse team had played Nov. 1 at home, trailing DeSales 40-6 at the end of the first quarter, with 10 eligible players; Trey Fleming gone at FFA Nationals in Indianapolis, big man Kameron Greenhalgh standing on the sidelines with a shoulder injury – pressed into service as statman with a 15-minute tutorial on the app – and on the field, young backups plugged in for a rite of passage.
They finished the game against DeSales, the 2B once-power now playing 1B (but not eligible for postseason).
Junior Doug Stach scored the SJEL's lone touchdown on a kickoff return.
Next, non-league Inchelium would come to St. John this week – for which the Eagles would have 6-7 players back for senior night and the last game of the year. Coach Hallenius talked about ringing the school victory bell after the game.
But the phone rang Tuesday.
It was SJEL Athletic Director Ken Gehring.
He had news. Inchellium forfeited the game.
Hallenius and Gehring talked.
Plans changed. The coach would cancel practice Wednesday to allow the boys to go to Pomeroy to cheer the girls volleyball team in the opening round of district playoffs.
On Thursday, the football team would gather, collect and clean gear, and, the coach surmised, they'd eat Papa Murphy's pizza in the cafeteria on the school's group discount and he'd show them "Vision Quest" – with a few parts fast-forwarded.
"This is what Spokane used to look like," Hallenius said.
That's the way the Eagles season was projected to end, for a record of 3-7 overall, 1-4 in league.
"Then we'll start thinking about plans for next year," said Hallenius.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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