PORT TOWNSEND — It’s a defeat that still reverberates through the Port Angeles football program.
Last year’s season-opening 49-0 demolition at the hands of a hungry, motivated Port Townsend team at Memorial Field stuck with the Roughriders all season.
It even colored two different Port Angeles blocking drills during an early preseason practice last month.
Head coach Bret Curtis and line coach Brent Wasche each emphasized the game and the Redhawks’ blitzing prowess at different points of the practice session.
The two teams meet up again tonight at 7 p.m. at Memorial Field for tonight’s Port City Showdown, the third straight season the North Olympic Peninsula teams have played each other.
The game is being held tonight because Memorial Field is rented for use as a parking lot during this weekend’s Wooden Boat Festival.
Port Angeles squeaked past Port Townsend 14-13 in 2014, and well, we all know what happened last year.
The Redhawks fell 27-26 to Sequim to open play last Friday, a game in which a shorthanded Port Townsend squad trailed by 14, 12 and 13 points at various times.
“For the amount of kids we had and for the first game of the season I thought we played really well,” Redhawks coach Alex Heilig said.
“We were really tight on bodies, but I thought the kids we did have really stepped up. “We fulfilled our motto of battle, that’s for sure. We battled our way back a number of times.
“I hate to lose, I truly do, but there were a lot of positives to take away.”
The sophomore-dominated Riders, meanwhile, lost 40-0 to Class 3A Mount Tahoma, a senior dominated team that returned eight starters on both sides of the ball, many in the 200-pound and over range.
Port Townsend doesn’t boast that many big guys, but I expect the Redhawks to run and throw their way to a sizeable victory.
The game also serves as the ninth annual Andy Palmer Memorial Classic, a fundraiser for a scholarship program that provides funding to one Port Angeles and one Port Townsend student each school year.
Palmer, a 2008 Port Townsend graduate and football player, attended Port Angeles schools through middle school. He was killed while working as a wildland firefighter in California just two months after his high school graduation.
Prediction: Port Townsend 44, Port Angeles 6.
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Sports reporter/columnist Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 orat mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
