NEAH BAY — Before the football season, John Reamer was more than a little bit irked.
The chip on his shoulder was obvious and certainly genuine.
Reamer has played a big part in Neah Bay’s two state football championships in 2011 and 2013, but coming into his senior season, many doubted that the Red Devils would be serious contenders this year.
They simply graduated too much talent.
But Reamer has worked too hard to be part of a rebuilding season.
Besides, he knew he and the other returning players were not to be overlooked, and he felt strongly that the Red Devils would return to the Tacoma Dome and compete for a repeat.
He was right, and here they are: Headed to their fourth consecutive Class 1B state championship game Saturday against Liberty Christian at 4 p.m. at the Tacoma Dome.
“These guys are my friends, so I knew my friends could play, too,” Reamer said after last Saturday’s state semifinal win over Lummi.
“And they worked hard, so we deserve this, and we’re ready to make our statement to be the best team in Neah Bay history.”
After Neah Bay claimed last year’s state title with a 36-18 win over Touchet, while the champs were still celebrating with family and friends at the Tacoma Dome, outgoing senior Ezekiel Greene said it was up to Reamer to keep the Red Devils rolling.
Greene wasn’t the only one to put the onus on Reamer.
“Well, you know, John, he’s up for the role,” Neah Bay coach Tony McCaulley said Saturday.
“And he needs the pressure on him. He’s a senior and he’s the one that wants it more than anybody, it seems like.
“We do put a lot on John’s shoulders. He’s a senior and that’s what you’ve got to. We expect him to play well.”
But the load hasn’t all been put on Reamer’s shoulders.
McCaulley points out younger players such as sophomores Cole Svec and Cameron Buzzell and freshman Rwehabura Munyagi Jr. also have stepped up.
And Reamer has high expectations of his teammates: When he said they can play, he meant it.
“Like on a big play on defense, the guys will come to me and look to me for it, but I’m looking right back at them because I know I’m not the only one that can make it out there,” Reamer said.
Weapon on both sides
Defense is where Reamer is at his best, so there have been plenty of big plays despite constant double teams.
The defensive end leads the Red Devils with 11 sacks and is second on the team with 86 tackles (58 unassisted).
The 5-foot-10, 215-pounder also has turned himself in a pretty good receiver, too, over the past two seasons.
This year, he has 27 catches for 637 yards. More than half of those catches, 14, have gone for touchdowns, many of those long scoring plays like his 68-yard catch-and-run touchdown against Lummi on Saturday.
The receiving gig is fairly new. Reamer had caught passes before his junior season, but he was more of an offensive lineman early in his high school career.
“There was something looming and I was like, I don’t really like blocking, I want to be a receiver,” he said.
“With all the big guys, it was like, ‘Ah, you can’t be a receiver.’ But as I kept getting older and older, I finally hit my growth spurt . . . so I finally came into my own.”
Reamer has worked with the quarterbacks and has gone to various offseason camps — including four this past summer — to improve his pass catching.
He also has fallen in love with training, which has transformed his body.
Reamer said he weighed 255 pounds as a freshman and 235 as sophomore. He was a slimmer, more muscular 235 again last year.
This year, he is a much stronger and faster 214 pounds.
This weight loss forced him to switch his No. 34 jersey to one that fits better, No. 9 (which also happens to fit perfectly with his “RE9EAT” hastag on Twitter).
He said the gym has become a “home away from home.”
“My trainer actually had to try keep me out of the gym because that’s the only place I wanted to be; I wanted to be getting better and better every single day,” Reamer said.
“People would see me there in the morning during the summer and say, ‘What’s up, John?’ and the same people would see me there at night and say, ‘What are you still doing here?’
“I’d go there, go home for a little bit, help my dad out, and then I’d try get back as fast as I could later in the night.”
During the football season, he limits himself to four days a week.
Little brother’s time
Look, Reamer is well aware of what Neah Bay lost last year. Ezekiel Greene, Josiah Greene, Tyler McCaulley and the other 2013 seniors are his best friends.
But instead of thinking about how great things used to be, he’s intent on forging his own legacy by continuing theirs.
“The only extra pressure I feel is I feel I owe something to those guys that graduated,” Reamer said.
“I played the little brother role growing up with all them. I was always with them — that was my crew, I was the little brother.
“And with all of them being gone, I feel like I had to live up to the big brother shoe and go back and do it again on my own terms with my own thing.
“It’s fun. These guys are crazy. It’s different, but I’m having a lot of fun with these guys.”
He might even one-up his buddies.
The Red Devils (12-0) beat Lummi three times this season, something the Class of 2013 never did.
Those players finished their careers with two state championships and never won back-to-back titles — Reamer and the other seniors can repeat and claim a third title with a win over Liberty Christian on Saturday.
That’s another thing the Class of 2013 didn’t do: Beat Liberty Christian.
The Patriots thwarted Neah Bay’s last repeat attempt with a 34-28 win in the 2012 title game.
“Before the game, Josiah texted me, right before this game, all it said was, ‘Better not let LC beat us again. Love you,’” Reamer said Saturday.
“I wasn’t overlooking Lummi, but that’s what he said.
“We’re ready. We’ve just got to come out here on fire and leave it all out here one last time.”
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Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
