High School Football: The N2/BZM Power Rankings II
Pound for Pound: Small schools (and Kelso) pick up the slack for slow starting city boys
Nick Sisson (N2Media) & Jordan Nailon (Blast Zone Media) / blastzonenews@gmail.com
High School Football
The second week of high school football has always been a favorite around here. It’s the one week of the schedule when coaches can collectively spout off quite literally any cliché in the manual to fill in the gaps between stats.
For instance, the “we’ve got a long way to go until the season’s over”, or the ever-so-popular “that’s why we scheduled a tough non-league schedule.” Both statements are more than applicable when discussing the “big city” schools in Longview, where R.A. Long and Mark Morris are both winless.
While smaller schools reigned supreme (here’s looking at you Toledo) for the second week in a row in our rankings, the roommates of Longview Memorial Stadium will need to find the answers to the their questions, and they’ll need to do it fast.
R.A. Long was hopeful to be in position to pick up a win against a struggling program from Centralia, but the boys in Bengals helmets weren’t interested in being labeled “Paper Tigers.” Centralia not only defeated R.A. Long, but they also shut them out 35-0. The win snapped an 11-game losing streak for Centralia, and sent the Lumberjacks straight into Michael Jackson mode — looking at the man in the mirror.
Meanwhile, Mark Morris was down in Vancouver playing against recently anointed 1A power Seton Catholic, and things got out of hand in a hurry. Seton amassed a 42-0 lead at half time and made it look easy against the hopeful Monarchs. Sure, considering the opposition Mark Morris has gone up against makes it easy to gloss over the results, however the Monarchs were looking to build on these two non-league games and take a step forward as a program before looking to grind out league competition.
We’re not big on excuses around here, so we won’t be making any for either the Jacks or Monarchs. But to be completely honest with you, all “experts” expected to see a little more improvement from both. It’s too early to hit the panic button if you’re either team, but the alarms should be sounding, and a sense of urgency should be in the air because league play gets underway Friday when R.A. Long hosts Hudson’s Bay, and Mark Morris hits the road again to battle Columbia River in Hazel Dell.
Joining the Longview schools this week in the loss column after Week 1 victories were Castle Rock, Kalama, and Woodland. The boys from The Rock had an impressive showing in their opener against R.A. Long (35-8 win), however the Rockets were not clear for take-off at Rochester in a 49-14 loss.
Woodland played a tough game on natural grass against always tough and well-coached La Center and got clipped 34-17. The Beavs managed to split their non-league pair this season, which is fifty percent better than a season ago when they repeated as league champs. The quest to 3-peat will begin with a tough test once again this week at Washougal.
Kalama fits differently compared to previous mentioned teams in my eyes. They have played two tough games and were in position to have won both games based on the result of two plays. Despite the 0-2 start to the season, Kalama has been competitive as they almost always are. Way, way too early to panic, but the 1A Trico will be even tougher to earn a playoff berth out of this season.
As for the small schools that were the big winners of the week — Hello Wahkiakum! Toutle Lake! And Toledo (!), again… The Mules made sure to put it on Naselle in the Battle for Km Mountain last week, and Blast Zone was there to see it all. And let’s just say this for those wondering what’s going in the wild 1B world; the final score says far more about what Wahkiakum brings to the table than it does about what the Comets do not. There’s a reason both Ocean Beach Highway schools are ranked in the Top-10 of the Washington State Coaches Poll.
Speaking of rankings… keep check your subscription status and keep scrolling to find out where your favorite teams landed on the only list that matters.
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