PREP FOOTBALL: Neah Bay runs away from Quilcene late

QUILCENE — Neah Bay wore down Quilcene in the second half and pulled away with three fourth quarter touchdowns in a 60-39 nonleague win over the Rangers on Saturday.

The Rangers cut the Red Devil lead to 38-32 early in the fourth quarter on a 10-yard TD pass from Holdem Elkins to Kristian Mack, but that was as close as Quilcene would get.

“Their coach has mentioned that depth is a concern for them and we have a little of it, so we looked to take advantage of it,” Neah Bay coach TJ Greene said. “We told our kids coming in that they would battle us for the first quarter, the whole first half and we are just going to keep working, make sure we take control in the second half and they followed through and did that.”

Toby Croy did much of the damage for the Red Devils piling up 333 rushing yards on 21 carries with five touchdown runs and another 88-yard kick return for a score.

“Mostly to the outside,” Croy said of where he found running lanes. “And I credit my linemen up front. I have some amazing linemen.”

Croy went head to head in the first half with Quilcene sophomore running back Bishop Budnek who totaled 265 of his 274 rushing yards in the first half before sitting out much of the second half with an ankle injury.

“Before the game my ankle was a little injured and I decided to play through it, and then I tackled him [Croy] and he landed on my ankle and destroyed it,” Budnek said.

Croy said Budnek’s absence had an impact.

“He was a key player for them, he’s pretty good,” Croy said.

The Rangers provided the test the Red Devils expected.

“We expected a battle after watching them last week against Crescent,” Greene said. “They have some good, hard inside running and as I told you from the beginning of the season we are still trying to figure our linebacker play and they exploited that some today.”

The strength of our offense was our offensive line. They really worked well together and we have a little speed there [with Croy].”

Quilcene coach Trey Beathard said his team will need to work on tackling in the open field and not giving up as many explosive plays.

“I like teams to earn it [against our defense],” Beathard said. “It’s hard to work your way downfield bit by bit in 8-man football.

“That’s one thing [Neah Bay] did well — on the passes we completed they tackled us. They did a nice job of open field tackling. They did better than us in that regard.”

Beathard’s squad was without some starters and had a couple of other players impacted by injuries.

“That didn’t help,” he said. “I won’t say [missing Budnek] that’s the only thing that hurt us. We are like a lot of teams are — we’ve had a little more depth and we don’t have that now.”

“We have different [talent and experience] levels on our team and when he’s out we don’t have someone that’s a little below, we have kids who haven’t really played much before. All of a sudden we have a couple of kids who are playing both ways right now that we didn’t expect would have to do that.

“And we have some kids that have been out and coming back that will help us in the future. And I’m hoping we get a little better. I wanted to play Neah Bay because they are good and hopefully we can learn from this and improve a little bit in the next couple of weeks.

But [injuries] that’s all part of it. We don’t feel sorry for other people when their guys are missing and they don’t feel sorry for us when we are going without.”

Beathard compared his team’s performance in the loss to last week’s 18-12 win over Crescent.

“I almost feel a little better about how we played this week than we did last week,” Beathard said.

Quilcene (2-1) visits Rainier Christian on Oct. 4.

Neah Bay (2-0) hosts Lummi in a nonleague game against a league opponent at 5 p.m. Friday.

Neah Bay 60, Quilcene 39

Neah Bay 18 14 6 22 — 60

Quilcene 20 6 0 13 — 39

First Quarter

Q — Bishop Budnek 80 run (Mack pass from Elkins)

NB — Tyree 85 pass from Soeneke (Croy run)

Q —B. Budnek 55 run (run failed)

NB — Croy 88 kick return (Horejsi pass from Soeneke)

Q — Budnek 39 run (pass failed)

NB — Safety. Ball snapped out of end zone.

Second Quarter

NB — Croy 10 run (run failed)

Q —Budnek 46 run (run failed)

NB — Croy 70 run (Tyree pass from Soeneke)

Third Quarter

NB —Croy 28 run (run failed)

Fourth Quarter

Q —Mack 10 pass from Elkins (run failed)

NB — Soeneke 2 run (run failed)

NB —Croy 27 run (Horejsi pass from Soeneke)

NB — Croy 69 run (Carrick pass from Soeneke)

Q — Zach Budnek 14 pass from Elkins (Z. Budnek kick)

Individual Statistics

Running: NB—Croy 21-333, Soeneke 12-82, Richardson 11-47, Tyree 3-(-4). Q—B. Budnek 9-274, Dugdale 10-36, Newman 3-20, Smead 2-16, Elkins 1-4.

Passing: NB—Soeneke 7-11-150, INT, TD; Tyree 1-1-20. Q—Elkins 11-22-174, TD.

Receiving: NB—Tyree 4-112, Croy 2-30, Soeneke 1-20, Carrick 1-8. Q— B. Budnek 2-63, Z. Budnek 2-44, Newman 5-36, Smead 2-31.