2B Football: Clear Skies for Pirates in Rivalry Win

ADNA — The last time the Pirates beat rival Napavine, every player on the current roster was in grade school.

And Friday night’s matchup, pitting top-ranked Adna against the No. 3 Tigers in both teams’ SWW 2B League Mountain Division opener, was as good a setting as any for breaking that dubious streak.

The Pirates ran for over 500 yards and their defense bottled up Napavine for all but one third-quarter possession, hitting the turbo button in the second half to celebrate homecoming with a 50-13 win to stay undefeated.

“I haven’t beaten Napavine since probably the sixth grade, and it feels great,” Adna senior Brady Collins said. “Just beating them, and doing it like that? That’s awesome.”

Collins returned a punt 65 yards for the Pirates’ first score and hauled in a 53-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Braden Thomas in the second half. The bulk of Adna’s 577 yards of offense, though, came on the ground; Thomas ran 13 times for 163 yards and a touchdown and Chance Fay added 11 carries for 147 yards and two scores.

Both of Fay’s touchdowns, and 135 of his yards, came after the halftime intermission, when the senior was crowned homecoming king.

Before that, though, Adna’s offense hit a few rough patches, losing two fumbles and tossing an interception in the first two quarters. A 17-yard touchdown run from Sawyer Burdick in the second quarter gave the hosts a 14-0 lead, and the defense held Napavine to 61 first-half yards and stopped the Tigers’ most productive drive in the red zone just before halftime.

“We played great defensively, and it took a little while to get our offense going,” Collins said. “But we got going in the second half and just didn’t look back.”

To get the ball rolling, though, they needed a kick, and Napavine provided it. Tiger quarterback Dawson Stanley broke off runs of 19 and 27 yards to start the third quarter, then found Laythan Demarest in the end zone for a 30-yard touchdown that cut the lead to 14-7 less than a minute into the second half.

“We responded,” Adna coach K.C. Johnson said. “I kept telling them, we cannot let them score and get back in it.”

What followed was what Johnson said was likely his team’s best quarter of the season.

Fay took the first handoff 73 yards up the right side for a touchdown, and kicker Mitchell Maynard ran it in to put Adna up 22-7.

The Tigers then went three-and-out, and two plays later Thomas broke off a 40-yard touchdown run, just over 2 minutes after Fay’s score.

Napavine was again forced to punt, and two plays later Thomas found Collins for a 53-yard touchdown. Fay added his second touchdown less than 2 minutes later on a 5-yard run that pushed the lead to 43-7, and any suspense the game may have held was gone.

“We played far from great,” Johnson said, “but we played a lot better for 48 minutes.”

Adna piled up 511 yards on the ground and held Napavine to 207 yards of total offense, which included a 62-yard run from reserve Dayton Keyes in the fourth quarter. Napavine completed just 2 of 19 passes for 61 yards.

“I thought they looked really physical, and they only had to run about five plays,” Tiger coach Josh Fay said. “We didn’t do a good job, and I certainly didn’t do a good job of getting us prepared, but man, I certainly give K.C. and his guys a lot of credit.”

Johnson was proud of his team’s defensive effort, particularly the defensive backfield of Collins, Thomas, Cole Fay and Elmer Loose, who were in man coverage most of the night.

“We knew they were going to try to throw the ball around a little bit, but we knew Dawson was their biggest threat and he was going to run the ball a lot,” Collins said. “So we tried to key on that a lot and our defensive linemen and our linebackers did a great job tonight.”

Maynard added a 46-yard rushing touchdown in the fourth quarter, and Napavine lineman Hayden Thompson recovered a fumble in the end zone for the Tigers’ second score in the game’s final minutes.

The loss dropped Napavine to 3-2 on the season. The Tigers host Morton-White Pass (4-1) on Friday in another Mountain Division contest.

Adna (5-0) hits the road on Saturday to face Life Christian Academy at Harry Lang Stadium in Lakewood in a Mountain Division game.

Note: Adna’s last win over the Tigers came in 2011, when the Pirates opened the season with a 26-0 win at Napavine. Adna went 9-2 that season, losing to Morton-White Pass in the state quarterfinals.