TACOMA — Neah Bay left no doubt who the best 8-man football team is in Washington.
The Red Devils are state champions for the second straight year and the third time in four years after beating Liberty Christian 56-38 in the Class 1B title game at the Tacoma Dome.
“Everyone doubted us, that’s the funny thing. They said we lost like 11 seniors, we couldn’t make it,” Neah Bay sophomore Cole Svec said following Saturday’s game.
“It felt good. We proved everyone wrong, and we’re going to do the same thing next year.”
The Red Devils lost a lot of talented players from last year’s team, but the wins kept coming.
Now the seniors who played football for all four years end their high school careers with three state titles.
Those seniors all played major roles in the latest championship game win.
“It’s crazy. It’s what I’ve worked for for the last three years,” one of those seniors, John Reamer, said.
“I wanted to be the man senior year, I wanted to win state.
“And we did it. I’ve got more rings than my friends now — got one up — first team to repeat in Neah Bay history, it’s just unreal, man.”
Reamer was the man who completely changed the game.
The Red Devils (13-0) and Patriots (11-1) played a back-and-forth first half, exchanging score for score in a surprisingly offensive battle, and went into intermission with Neah Bay in the lead 22-18.
Liberty Christian had the ball first in the third quarter and quickly drove inside the Neah Bay 10-yard line.
Patriots quarterback John Lesser ran up the middle behind his blockers, but Reamer muscled the ball away and ran 91 yards for a touchdown.
“I saw him cutting back in the hole, and I reached in and grabbed the nose [of the ball], just like they teach you, and rolled out with it. Beat one guy, and I just knew,” Reamer said.
Instead of Liberty Christian taking another lead, Neah Bay was up two scores, 30-18.
Reamer’s fumble return is the longest ever in a Class 1B championship game.
“Huge momentum-turner,” senior Josh Monette said.
“We needed that bad. And there was an interception by Chris Martinez, and huge plays by these boys. Huge plays.”
Martinez, another senior, played like someone who was playing his last game, which he was.
He ran for 133 yards and four touchdowns on 18 carries, bouncing off and bowling over would-be tacklers.
“The first thing John Reamer said to me before the game was, ‘You got me, I got you.’ You know, so do it for the person next to you,” Martinez said.
“He’s been my inspiration for this season, he’s really pushed me to be my best, and I just left it all out there for my teammates.”
Martinez’s blockers — offensive linemen Jarickson Kanichy, also a senior, Daniel Kilmer and Noah Rascon, and fullback Elisha Winck — opened holes and Martinez took care of the rest.
Freshman quarterback Rwehabura Munyagi Jr. even got into the blocking act on a 16-yard touchdown run by Martinez.
Martinez broke a tackle near the line of scrimmage and changed direction toward the open space on the right side of the field.
Liberty Christian’s Mitch Godwin was in pursuit until he was decleated by Munyagi.
“I carried out my fake and [Martinez] cut back, so that guy was following him, looking at him and he didn’t see me so I just hit him,” Munyagi said.
The two-score lead gained by Reamer’s fumble return was short lived.
With the Patriots at their own 5, Liberty Christian’s Cody Daniels broke off an 88-yard run that took the ball to Neah Bay’s 7-yard line.
Cameron Buzzell caught up to Daniels to prevent the touchdown, but Lesser scored on the next play.
The Red Devils responded with a 2-yard touchdown run by Michael McGee on his only carry of the game to take a 36-24 lead.
Liberty Christian again answered, this time with a touchdown run by Daniels.
After trying onside kicks the entire game, the Patriots finally kicked long to Svec, and they paid for it.
Svec fielded the kick and ran behind a wall of blockers for an 88-yard return for a touchdown.
“They just told me to run down the sidelines as fast as I can, so that’s what I did: listen to the coach,” Svec said.
Svec carried the ball 21 times for 159 yards.
The state title game was viewed as a matchup between Neah Bay’s strength and Liberty Christian’s speed.
It ended up being Red Devils’ strength and speed against the Patriots’ speed.
“The only thing that I think that we surprised them with is I think we’re a little faster than they thought,” Neah Bay coach Tony McCaulley said.
“They couldn’t get our run stopped. You know, they said we’re one-dimensional, and maybe we are, but you better bring it when you’re going to try to stop us.”
It wasn’t just the speed of Svec and Martinez. Buzzell and senior Collin Haupt saved scores by running down big plays from behind.
Soon after Svec’s kickoff return, the Neah Bay defense put the game away.
On Liberty Christian’s next play from scrimmage, Martinez intercepted Lesser to set up the Red Devils’ offense at the Patriots’ 46-yard line with just over a minute to play in the third quarter.
“I can’t say enough about Chris Martinez. Man, that guy played probably the best game of anybody tonight,” McCaulley said.
“He played so good. He left it all out there, and that’s what we asked of him.”
A few plays into the fourth, Munyagi connected with Buzzell for a 28-yard touchdown pass on fourth and long.
It was the pair’s second straight game hooking up on fourth down for a key fourth-quarter touchdown.
“It was the same play as last week, just a delay pass, and it gets them, I guess,” Buzzell said.
Neah Bay’s lead became 50-32 with 10:37 to play.
Liberty Christian answered quickly again, going 46 yards in two plays to make it 50-38.
Martinez scored his fourth touchdown less than three minutes later to end scoring.
“I can say that they played outstanding football here,” McCaulley said.
“You know, I didn’t expect it. I really didn’t. I mean, I expected them to play good, I knew we had good players.
“But for them to work as hard as they did in the offseason and to come out and play like this, it’s all a credit to them.
“It wasn’t us, it was what they did. They did it, and that’s great.”
The win avenged Neah Bay’s most recent loss, which came on the last play of the 2012 state championship game to Liberty Christian.
The Red Devils have won 25 straight games since.
“It feels great. We tied up all the loose ends at the end here. We beat Liberty Christian and Lummi, the only two teams we’ve ever lost to, for us seniors,” Monette said.
“So no better way to go out. I mean, it was a tough route, but no better way, no better feeling. It’s the icing on the cake.”
The Patriots out-gained the Red Devils 516-344, but had five turnovers.
“They realize that they have had better days on the football field,” Liberty Christian head coach Mike Olson said, “and we happened to play against a team tonight that didn’t allow us to get away with not having a good day.”
Lesser, who scored the winning touchdown as time expired in the 2012 championship game, ran for 146 yards and three scores and passed for 212 yards with three interceptions.
Most of his incompletions came near the end of the game as he and the Patriots were wearing down and trying to force their way back in the game.
“It feels awesome, because at the beginning of the year, everyone thought that we were going to do nothing because we lost so much seniors from last year, and we just won it,” Buzzell said.
“These guys beat us when we could have repeated in 2012, so we wanted to settle the score and get the win.”
McCaulley declined to compare this state championship with those won by the Red Devils in 2011 and 2013.
“They’re all different. They’re all fun,” he said.
“When you get here and you play here, it’s all really fun for the kids.”
More: NEAH BAY NOTEBOOK: Reamer’s strip changes state championship game for Neah Bay — https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20141208/NEWS/312089990/prep-football-notes-reamers-strip-changes-state-championship-game
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Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
