2B Football: Top-Ranked Pirates Blast Concrete

ADNA — The Pirates didn’t have a lot of time to game plan for their State 2B playoff opener.

And in the end — specifically, by the end of the first half — it didn’t really matter.

Top-ranked Adna ran a grand total of 20 offensive plays in the first half and converted those snaps into 54 points, crushing Concrete by a final score of 54-19 here Friday night to advance to the state quarterfinals.

Braden Thomas and Chance Fay each accounted for three first-half touchdowns to lead Adna, which did all of its scoring before the break and rested its starters for the entirety of the second half.

“That’s the goal,” said Adna coach K.C. Johnson. “I was happy with it. We want 40-plus at half when we’re playing these style of games, just so the young guys can get experience and play and we can get guys out and rest them.”

The lead-up to the game was a bit out of the ordinary. Concrete beat Friday Harbor, 7-6, in a tiebreaker on Tuesday night, two days after the WIAA had announced its state brackets. The Northwest 2B League had been unable to settle a tie between the Lions and Wolverines prior to the Sunday meeting of the state seeding committees, leaving top-seeded Adna with a question mark as its first-round opponent and making game-planning slightly more difficult.

“It was. I mean, it was enough time, obviously — we knew what we needed to do,” Johnson said. “We tried to get the personnel in the game that could stop double-wing and cover their spread, and we were able to do it well.”

The defense held Concrete to negative-39 rushing yards in the first half, and Adna didn’t have much trouble jumping out to a big lead. Sawyer Burdick broke off a 61-yard run on the first play to set up a 5-yard touchdown run from Thomas. The Pirates’ next drive ended in an interception, but the third possession started with a 69-yard run from Chance Fay and saw Thomas reach the end zone a play later on an 8-yard run.

Fay then intercepted an attempted pitch on a fourth-down play from the Lions and packed it 20 yards for a score, and Thomas broke off a 58-yard run that put Adna up 27-0 with over a minute left in the first quarter.

Thomas, a junior first-year quarterback, was playing in his first-ever state playoff game after moving to Adna from Walla Walla last year.

“It’s fun. You’ve got to play as your last game, because that’s what it is, and it’s great to play with these brothers,” he said. “I’m very thankful for that, and we earn it. We’ve been working hard and everything.”

Thomas finished with five carries for 105 yards, all in the first half, while Chance Fay ran four times for 85 yards and added 2- and 8-yard touchdown runs in the second quarter. His younger brother Cole Fay chipped in a 2-yard scoring run in the second quarter, and Elmer Loose returned a punt 51 yards for a touchdown with 37 seconds left in the first half that sent the Pirates into the break up 54-0.

Loose was also a standout as a defensive back, nearly intercepting a handful of passes in the first half.

“I thought Elmer had some great coverage tonight (covering Concrete’s Tyler Nevin). He’s a great athlete, and their quarterback can throw it, and I was really proud of our DBs in coverage,” Johnson said. “And I thought our run defense was super physical up front. And that’s what we need to do.”

Concrete did all of its damage against the Pirate reserves, with quarterback Peyton Sanchez throwing a 77-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Nevin and a 24-yard strike to Devin Blankenship. David O’Neil added a 2-yard touchdown run for the Lions, who finished the season with a 4-7 record.

Concrete also had a strange week leading up to Friday’s game. The Lions beat Chimacum in a non-league game on Nov. 2, won the tiebreaker four days later, and wound up stuck in traffic during what turned out to be a six-hour drive to Adna on Friday. The Lions’ bus arrived just after 6:30 p.m., pushing kickoff back to 7:25 p.m.

“I wasn’t ready for that,” Thomas said, of having no opponent on the field a half hour before gametime. “But we just started warming up again, and we’re ready for anything that comes towards us.”

The Pirates (11-0) will face the winner of Saturday’s Onalaska at Lake Roosevelt first-round game next Friday or Saturday in the quarterfinals. It’ll be the Pirates’ first quarterfinal appearance since 2013, when Adna lost to eventual state champion Lind-Ritzville/Sprague in the semifinals.

Johnson said the team knows next week’s game isn’t as likely to come as easily.

“Like I told them, those games are over,” he said. “We’re going to be playing four quarters of football now, and we’re going to have to earn everything.”