High School Football: The N2/BZM Power Rankings IX (UPDATED)

Pound For Pound – Three teams finish regular season undefeated for the first time this century

By Nick Sisson (N2 Media) and Jordan Nailon (Blast Zone Media) / blastzonenews@gmail.com

Prep Football / Rankings

If it feels like high school football season just got started a few short months ago, well, it did. And we’ve done our best to document the highs and lows along the way.

A trick-or-treat style Week 9 of the regular season ushered in a mixed bag of results for schools within the sprawling confines of The Blast Zone. Half of the teams under our supervision have already seen the door slam shut on their campaigns, while the lucky half has been busy preparing for at least one more week on the gridiron.

But not all winners all created equal. And with the postseason set to kick off tonight, we need to take a moment to recognize the few, the proud, and the undefeated.

If that sounded like a 1990’s recruiting ad for the Marines, it was meant to. But it was also a reference to one of the most rare accomplishments on the books after multiple teams finished the regular season undefeated inside the Blast Zone. Wahkiakum and their neighbors to the south across the big river, Clatskanie, finished with perfect regular season records of 9-0. Meanwhile, Toledo finished 8-0 overall with a bye last week. (More on this later).

It was the first time in at least three decades (which includes one turning of the century) that multiple local teams finished the season 9-0.

While Week 9 did provide punctuation for the teams who finished the regular season without a blemish on their record, those were the outliers. Most teams were out there fighting for their playoff lives, or simply buckling up their chin-straps for the final time this season, and possibly even their career. And if that doesn’t sound like much to play for, you’ve clearly never bitten down on partially molten rubber in order to form your own mouth guard.

For the majority of the season, there wasn’t a spectacular amount of drama from week to week, at least in the form of major upsets. Our collective patience paid off though in Week 8, when Mark Morris pulled off a huge win against Woodland that set up a possible playoff berth for the Monarchs. All that remained to be done was for Mark Morris to dispatch R.A. Long in the Civil War, which they did for the eighth straight season, with a final tally of 36-0. The other result that had to come to fruition for the Monarchs to reach the playoffs was for Ridgefield to defeat Woodland in Week 9. The Spudders ended up eking out a 17-16 win over the Beavers, eliminating Woodland from the playoffs in the process.

It’s crazy to think that we were talking about the possibly of Woodland still winning the league championship for a third straight season heading into Week 8. That’s how fast things can change in 2A Greater St. Helens League football!

The Monarchs had one more obstacle to overcome to get a berth into the actual Week 10 crossover round, a pigtail game against Aberdeen at Longview Memorial on Tuesday. But Aberdeen proved to be too difficult for Mark Morris to get by, and just like that, the season came to an end in an abbreviated 18-0 loss.

The Monarchs had a great story going, too. They started 0-4 on the year, going winless in the month of September before winning four of their last five entering the postseason. The only game they lost was at Ridgefield, and Mark Morris played pretty even with the Spudders for most of that contest. All things considered, the season should be viewed as a success for teh Monarchs, but it was surely a tough pill to swallow with how it all ended on a Tuesday night against the Bobcast.

Other local squads that were doing battle to clinch a spot in the postseason last week were Kalama and Castle Rock. The game was moved up by one day just in case the teams would be called upon again on short notice to play a potential tie-breaker in the event that Castle Rock won, which would have forced a three-way tie between themselves, the ‘Nooks, and King’s Way.

Kalama was quick to put those hopes to bed, though, dominating the Rockets 33-0 and ending Castle Rock’s season in disappointing fashion. Those ‘Nooks have lived to play another day, but the 1A playoff bracket is surely stacked this year, and a trip to Cashmere awaits Kalama on Saturday.

There are a few more results that are very much worth discussing (see: Kelso, Clatsakanie, Wahkiakum, Ilwaco, Onalaska and Toutle Lake) but let’s go one league at a time and see how everyone finished up in 2025.

— Content below this line is reserved for paid subscribers. Thank you for supporting Blast Zone Media and all local athletes with your subscription. —