SHORELINE — Typically when Neah Bay plays 11-man football the game ends up being similar to the Red Devils’ 8-man games.
This wasn’t the typical 11-man game for the two-time defending Class 1B state champions.
The Red Devils still won, 44-36, but Northwest Christian of Colbert put up a fight and even held a lead as late as one minute left in Saturday’s game at King’s High School.
“I was really happy that we won the game and happy that we had a tough game. We don’t get that very often early in the season,” Neah Bay coach Tony McCaulley said.
“We were down late in the third quarter, and we played through that. It didn’t bother us at all.”
After the Crusaders took a 21-20 lead on a 53-yard touchdown pass from David Olds to Ryan Ricks with 5:35 left in the third, quarterback Rwehabura Munyagi Jr. drove Neah Bay down the field.
The drive was on the verge of stalling in the red zone when the Red Devils faced a fourth-and-12 at Northwest Christian’s 18-yard line.
But on that play, Munyagi connected with Kenrick Doherty Jr. for a touchdown with one minute remaining in the third.
The touchdown came on the birthday of Doherty’s older brother and former Neah Bay star athlete, Drexler, who died two years ago next month.
Tommy Tyler sacked Olds to set up a punt by Joel Biel that only traveled 24 yards, setting up Neah Bay at the Crusaders’ 31.
Cole Svec took it from there.
The junior ran for 6 yards, then 6 yards again, then 10 yards before running into the end zone from 9 yards out.
A pass from Munyagi to Doherty on the two-point conversion extended the Red Devils’ lead to 36-21 with 9:44 to play in the final quarter.
The Crusaders answered 17 seconds later when Olds hooked up with Ian Starkey for a 61-yard touchdown pass to cut Neah Bay’s lead to 36-28.
Northwest Christian then put the Red Devils in another sticky scenario: fourth-and-11 from the Neah Bay 41.
Svec lined up to punt but instead ran up the middle for a 59-yard touchdown, the fourth TD of the game for the reigning 1B state player of the year.
Svec opened the scoring with a 1-yard run midway through the opening quarter.
The Crusaders finally got on the board in the second on a 15-yard run by Nathan Sander.
Neither team would score again in the first half, and the Red Devils took an 8-7 advantage into the break.
The second half was completely different from the defensive-dominated opening half.
Svec got it all started by returning the second-half kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown.
A little more than a minute later, Sander scored on a 10-yard run for Northwest Christian to tie the game 14-14.
The Red Devils retook the lead when Munyagi found Cameron Buzzell for a 13-yard scoring strike that made it 20-14.
The Crusaders then took their only lead of the game on the pass from Olds to Ricks.
Svec gained 264 yards and scored three rushing TDs on 30 carries to lead Neah Bay’s offensive attack that racked up 444 yards, including 312 on the ground.
Compiling those numbers in an 11-man game bode well for Svec, and for the second-ranked Red Devils, who are slated to return to 8-man action next week at No. 3 Lummi.
“He played pretty well,” McCaulley said of Svec.
“He struggled a little bit at the beginning, I don’t know why, but as the game rolled on, he got better and better.”
Munyagi, a sophomore, completed 8 of 18 passes for 123 yards with two touchdowns and three interceptions.
Buzzell made six catches for 61 yards, Doherty had three for 29 yards and Svec caught to passes for 33 yards. Svec also completed one pass, a 9-yarder to Munyagi.
For Northwest Christian, Sander carried eight times for 103 yards and Ethan Perreiah had 15 carries for 94 yards.
Olds completed 8 of 15 passes for 177 yards and two TDs with one interception, which was by his Neah Bay counterpart Munyagi.
The Crusaders’ final score came on a 65-yard interception return by Bryant Corrozo with 2:08 left in the game.
Northwest Christian is in its third season of fielding a football team.
Despite the school from the Spokane area being relatively new to the game, the Crusaders fared much better than the past two 11-man teams Neah Bay has opened its season against.
Last year, the Red Devils blanked Ocosta 60-0. They defeated Darrington, which spend much of the year in the 2B rankings, 50-6 in 2013.
