Coaches tend to downplay the importance of the nonleague season in high school football.
Yet it’s hard to deny the sort of boost starting a season off on the right note gives a team.
So as several of the North Olympic Peninsula’s teams take the field tonight, there is at least something on the line: momentum.
The Forks Spartans’ 19-0 opening week victory over the Sequim Wolves last year helped catapult them to a 9-2 season and their first state playoff appearance since 2000.
Sequim would later earn a state playoff berth of its own, so the loss ultimately meant nothing.
Still, it’s hard to deny the effect the victory had on the Forks program, which hadn’t won an opening week game in eight years.
“It did give us a boost,” third-year Forks coach Ron Hurn admitted.
The two meet for a rematch tonight in Sequim at 7 p.m., and both teams are surely looking to start off on the right foot.
“It’s a test,” Hurn said. “It’s going to show us where we’re at. Sequim’s got a great team.
“They’ve gone to the playoffs for quite a few years. [These nonleague games] do mean something, but what we look at is where we’re at right now and where we need to get to to compete in league.”
No doubt Sequim, ranked as high at No. 8 in Class 2A by some preseason polls, is looking forward to the game.
A total of nine offensive starters from last year’s team return. Surely many of them remember what it was like to get shutout for the first time in three years.
With the Wolves ready to unveil their new spread offense, it would seem a second shutout is highly unlikely.
Then again, those Spartans sure do know how to play defense.
Opening week is rife with rematches from the previous year.
Here’s a quick rundown of games for Peninsula teams:
• Port Angeles at North Mason (tonight, 7 p.m.) — The Roughriders, playing in their first game under new head coach Dick Abrams, are looking for revenge against a Bulldog team that beat them 41-0 to open last season.
Port Angeles hopes to move the ball better in its new Wing-T offense than it did running the shotgun spread in last year’s contest.
• Port Townsend at Coupeville (tonight, 7 p.m.) — The Redskins shredded Coupeville for 37 points in a win last fall.
Given all the experience they are bringing back to offensive side of the field this year (nine starters), they might do even better tonight.
• Kingston at Chimacum (tonight, 7 p.m.) — These two teams combined to go 2-18 last season.
Kingston’s lone victory came against, you guessed it, the Chimacum Cowboys. Chimacum, starting their first season under head coach Shawn Meacham, is looking to reverse that result.
• Neah Bay at Taholah (tonight, 7 p.m.) — The Red Devils square off against the team it eliminated from the 1B state playoffs last year.
Quarterback Drexler Doherty returns, as does a couple of all-league linemen in Anthony Rascon and Jon Tolliver.
• Mary M. Knight at Crescent (Saturday, 1 p.m.) — Talk about a momentum builder.
Last year’s 46-6 victory over Knight was just what the doctor ordered for the Loggers, winners of just one game the previous two seasons.
