The Tumwater football team makes it no secret; the T-Birds want to beat you on the ground, and use that to set up the pass. It’s the standard setup-to-punchline, one-two punch formula that’s worked for teams at all levels for ages.
Friday night in Poulsbo, the Thunderbirds had plenty of punchlines in a 34-14 win over North Kitsap.
“I felt like offensively we ran the ball really well between the 20s,” Tumwater coach William Garrow said. “And then inside that red zone, when teams start to pack the box, we were able to take a couple shots and do some things to get us some looks.”
Senior quarterback Ethan Kastner took advantage of those looks as much as humanly possible, finishing his night a perfect 10 for 10 for 146 yards and four touchdowns.
“He’s a great kid, and he does a really good job of buying into the system and being a good leader and doing what we asked,” Garrow said. “I’m super happy for him, he’s worked really hard to get here.”
The T-Birds also went into their bag of tricks and let another player throw the ball, with Kastner firing a sideways pass to David Malroy, who launched a deep ball to Jacob Dillon for another score.
Dillon finished with two touchdown catches, while Brady Bryant had three.
On the ground, Peyton Davis racked up 129 yards on 18 carries.
It’s the T-Birds’ second win in as many years over the Vikings, who have made back-to-back state semifinals. Last year’s game was an ugly 8-6 affair, though, while this time around, Tumwater got to flex its offensive muscles a bit more.
“Our kids played really hard, they did a really nice job today,” Garrow said. “Our coaches did a fantastic job of gameplanning on both sides of the ball. We threw some things at them on offense that we hadn’t shown in awhile.”
Tumwater’s road won’t get any easier, with the T-Birds hosting 3A Kelso next Friday.
“It’s really good for our kids, because we get to challenge ourselves and compete against really good teams, which is what we want to do,” Garrow said.
