ADNA — What could have been a bright night starting with senior night ceremonies and ending with a homefield clinching went sour quickly for the Adna football team, which never got its offense off the ground in a 36-6 loss to Kalama.
The loss — combined with Onalaska’s win over Wahkiakum — sent the middle of the SWW 2B South into a three-way tie for second. A quick coin flip was conducted for seeding, and the metal gave Onalaska second, Kalama third, and Adna fourth.
But after the way Thursday night went for the Pirates, nobody could place the blame on a coin.
“It’s basically do-or-die time now,” Adna coach Jason Dunnagan said. “That’s basically what I told them. If we want to go on, we’ve got to find some offense, because we haven’t had it all year and it’s been a struggle all year to find something offensively.”
Adna’s only points of the night came on an 82-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Seth Meister in the first quarter. That nearly doubled the 44 total yards the Pirates managed in the first half.
The hosts finished the night with just 151 total yards. Lane Johnson finished the night a rough 7 for 16 for 21 yards, with his longest completion going just 6, and four interceptions.
“We’ve struggled with the blitz all year, and it seemed like they had some A-gap blitzes that we struggled with again,” Dunnagan said. “We couldn’t get our vertical run game going. We felt like last week, we kind of found something, but we took a step back today.”
One of those picks ended up being the closest thing to an offensive spark the Pirates found early, when Adna turned offense into defense and forced and recovered a Kalama fumble on the ensuing return, netting itself 13 yards and earning its first first down of the game — on its fourth drive.
Before that, the Pirates had gone three-and-out, watched Kalama march down the field to take the lead, then fumbled away the ball on the first snap of their next drive, giving the Chinooks a short field to eventually kick a field goal.
Adna finished with four three-and-outs on the night, and had three more drives last fewer than three plays due to turnovers.
And when things looked like they couldn’t get worse, they did. Trailing 24-6 in the second quarter, Johnson rolled to his right and underthrew a diving Meister on an out route. It looked to be an incompletion, but Kalama played it like it had bounced off Meister’s hand on the ground, and promptly took the ball back 80 yards back past a mass of confused Pirates for a pick-6.
Jaxon Dunnagan led Adna with 54 rushing yards on 12 carries, and Johnson went for 37 on the ground.
Meister added two interceptions to his kickoff return, and also had a team-high three catches, though they only went for 8 yards.
Adna will take its fourth seed into the crossover week, going on the road to face Pe Ell-Willapa Valley. The Pirates edged out the Titans back in Week 2, but will need to find something resembling a groove, and fast.
“Our kids didn’t give up,” Jason Dunnagan said. “That’s one thing that I’m proud of; this program, we never give up, we always live to fight another day, and we’re going to fight real hard starting next week.”
