2B Football: Napavine Knocks Off PWV to Return to Championship Game

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TACOMA — Neither team came into the semifinals with a reputation for trickery.

It was a bit ironic, then, that two of the game’s biggest momentum swings came on gadget plays — one that worked, one that didn’t, and both of which managed to go Napavine’s way in a 29-13 win over Pe Ell-Willapa Valley in the State 2B playoffs in the Tacoma Dome.

The Tigers used a fake-PAT on their second touchdown to take a 15-7 lead into halftime, and quelled what could have been a key Titan drive midway through the fourth quarter when Cole Van Wyck picked off a halfback pass and ran it back 50 yards to the end zone.

“That was huge, for a sophomore to go make a play like that,” Napavine quarterback Wyatt Stanley said. “Coach (Josh Fay) had been preaching all along for someone to go make a big play, and Cole made a great play.”

Van Wyck’s pick-6 gave Napavine its final 16-point margin with 5 minutes, 15 seconds left and all but put the game away, forwarding Napavine back to the state championship game.
“We were practicing that pretty well, so when I came in, I knew my job,” Van Wyck said, of the throwback play. “When I dropped back I could see him wheeling out.”

The Tigers (11-2) will face Okanogan — to whom they lost, 17-14, in last year’s title game — on Saturday, back in the Tacoma Dome.

Stanley completed 7 of 22 passes for 119 yards and two touchdowns, while running 18 times for 36 yards and a score to lead Napavine. The Tigers also managed to pick off three passes and hold PWV to a season-low 153 yards of offense.

“You know, they’re a good team,” PWV coach Josh Fluke said. “What killed us was turnovers, and some penalties at the wrong time. That was the name of the game.”

Kaelin Jurek ran 13 times for 60 yards and two scores for PWV, which finished the season with an 11-1 record. The Titans, in their second year as a combination program, went undefeated in the Central 2B League and came into the game ranked No. 1 in the state after winning their last seven games by at least 40 points each.

“We were confident and felt we were going to come in here and win,” Stanley said. “Pe Ell’s a really good team. There’s a reason they were undefeated coming in here, and they really haven’t been tested since Week 3. We felt like we let that one slip away, and didn’t finish the game.

“One of the big things this week was we wanted to play 48 minutes and finish the game.”

The Titans went three-and-out on their first drive, but picked off Stanley’s first pass attempt to regain possession at midfield. The ensuing drive was their best of the game, covering 10 plays with productive runs from Cook, Flemetis and Jurek before Jurek found room on the outside for a 5-yard touchdown jaunt.



The Tigers came back and, on the strength of a 38-yard completion to Chase Van Wyck, worked down to the Titans’ 11-yard line before turning it over on downs.

Napavine woke up in the second quarter. Mac Fagerness returned a punt to the Titans’ 39-yard line, and a personal foul penalty set the Tigers up on the 26-yard line. Stanley hit Jordan Purvis for 22 yards, then ran it twice to finish off the drive and tie things up at 7-7.

Three punts later the Tigers started at midfield, with Stanley hitting Mac Fagerness for 36 yards on the first play. The quarterback then called his own number twice to pick up 7 yards, and after a fruitless handoff found Van Wyck on a short pass in the end zone in a fourth-and-3 situation.

The turning point, though, came on the point-after play. Kicker Austin Filley grabbed the extra-long snap and fired a quick pass to Van Wyck, again, in the end zone to stake Napavine a 15-7 lead with just over two minutes left until halftime.

Stanley found Fagerness for a 14-yard catch-and-run score in the third quarter, putting the Tigers up 22-7. The Titans answered early in the fourth, when Jurek found daylight on a 1-yard fourth down run. The 2-point conversion attempt was stuffed just shy of the goal line, leaving the Titans still needing two possessions to take a lead.

After a Tiger punt, the Titans set off from their own 10-yard line until a quarterback throwback pass from Jurek, intended for Jason Fluke, was picked off by Cole Van Wyck, who dashed through a crowded field to the end zone, taking the game’s momentum with him.

“You just love to see him make that play in the open field,” Fay said. “He got bottled up on the offensive end, so it’s good to see him make a couple moves and get shifty.”

The Titans’ next drive ended on an incomplete fourth-and-20 pass. They got the ball back after a Tiger turnover on downs, but Chase Van Wyck picked off a second-play pass on their next drive.

He took a knee, and Napavine kneeled out the last 90 seconds of clock to move on to the championship game.

“We stopped them a few times, and they definitely got to us there a little bit, when we started to get momentum and we’d turn the ball over,” Fluke said. “You can’t do that, so props to them. Good job to them.”

Napavine finished with 173 yards of offense, with 54 coming on the ground.

The Tigers will take on Okanogan at 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.