WENATCHEE — Top-seeded Odessa’s resume speaks for itself, a 12-0 record in which the Tigers put up 90-plus points on two occasions and broke the 80-point mark five times.
So No. 5 Quilcene knows it has its hands full Saturday when the Rangers travel to play in the Class 1B State Football Semifinals at the Wenatchee Apple Bowl at 4 p.m.
“They haven’t snuck up on anybody,” Quilcene coach Trey Beathard said.
“There’s no doubt they deserve to be the No. 1 team in the state. There are four teams left and they’ve already beat [No. 2] Almira/Coulee-Hartline soundly (56-22) and [No. 3] Naselle soundly (76-14).
“You can look at their scores and who they have played and know they have a super team. It’s going to be a big challenge. But it is football and sometimes you get a few breaks and momentum can turn on a play or two and you never know what’s going to happen.”
One area of the game in which the Rangers can help themselves out is special teams, specifically fielding Odessa’s onside kick attempts.
The Tigers use the onside kick like many eight-man football teams — a way to keep their offense on the field and piling up the points.
Beathard said he discovered Odessa’s aggressive special teams play while scouting game film of the Tigers.
“I was watching one of their games to try to figure out what they are going to do on defense and I had to wait until just before halftime to see them play defense [because of successful onside kicks].”
Beathard walked through a list of reasons why the play is more popular in eight-man football than in 11-man.
“It’s hard to cover a regulation-size field with eight players instead of 11,” Beathard said. “You kick it deep and it can be hard to contain on the runback.
“The extra possessions you can get from onside kicking, the more chances you have at scoring. It’s so hard to play defense in 8-man football anyway that a lot of teams use this as strategy.”
Quilcene has seen this tactic used against them unsuccessfully in the Quad-District Playoffs against Darrington and in last week’s state quarterfinal triumph over Sunnyside Christian.
“It’s something we saw against Sunnyside Christian and we aren’t as used to it in our league,” Rangers senior Olin Reynolds said. “We are practicing it everyday and I think we will be ready for it by Saturday.”
Beathard, who chooses to have his players kick deep or pooch kick to a spot between the special teams upmen and kick returners, thinks about player safety every time his team is forced to defend against onside kicks.
“That’s the time I get a little more worried about my kids,” Beathard said.
“They tried to change the rule, there were kickers who could make it bounce super high to make the receiving team jump up for it, essentially making them a defenseless receiver. So now they can’t immediately kick it into the ground. Some kids have gotten better about rolling it on the ground.
“I talk to officials before games about when they are allowed to hit us, when they can cross the line, that kind of thing. I just want to make sure the rules are known.”
Prior to the 2018 season, the National Federation of State High School Association, which sets rules for the sport, eliminated pop-up kicks in which the kicker drives the ball immediately to the ground and goes into the air in an effort to reduce the rick of injury on onside-kick attempts.
“It’s a challenge, a definite challenge, and it can be a gamechanger when teams do it,” Beathard said.
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
