Sequim is firing away as it heads into this week’s Rainshadow Rumble rivalry game against Port Angeles.
Freshman quarterback Riley Cowan threw for 307 yards and four touchdowns, completing 16 of 26 passes, in the Wolves’ 48-6 road win over North Mason last Friday.
That’s the first 300-yard passing game by a Sequim quarterback since Miguel Moroles threw for 308 yards in a 69-46 loss to North Mason in 2013 — the last time the Wolves traveled to Belfair to face the Bulldogs.
Cowan completed passes to six different receivers. One of his favorite targets was Nick Faunce, who Cowan has split time at quarterback this season.
Faunce hauled in four of Cowan’s passes for 64 yards. Two of those were touchdowns, including a nifty one-handed grab in the end zone.
The Wolves also continues to find ways to utilize their most explosive option, sophomore receiver Gavin Velarde.
Velarde, the team’s leading receiver and rusher this season, caught six passes for 138 yards and two scores, and carried the ball two times for 87 yards, highlighted by a 72-yard TD in the third quarter.
He returned a kickoff 81 yards for another touchdown.
The Wolves’ defense was just as impressive as the offense, holding the Bulldogs to 99 total yards and six points.
Sequim (2-1, 4-1) has held its opponents to 10 points or less in each of its four wins. (The Wolves’ lone loss was 27-10 to North Kitsap; they are the only Olympic League 2A team so far to hold the Vikings to less than 40 points.)
The significance of Friday’s win isn’t how well Sequim played. It is that it put the Wolves in postseason position — and, at this point, quite comfortably.
With three games left, they have a one-game cushion for the third and final postseason berth granted to Olympic League 2A this season.
It is actually more of a two-game cushion, because Sequim owns the head-to-head tiebreaker with the team directly below them, Kingston (2-2, 2-4).
Behind the Wolves and Buccaneers are three teams — Bremerton, North Mason and Port Angeles — that each have three league losses.
So Sequim can suffer a loss in its final three games — at home against the Roughriders on Friday and Olympic next week, then at Bremerton on Oct. 30 — without losing its hold on the postseason.
Here are two other things learned last week in North Olympic Peninsula high school football:
■ Safety in Quilcene.
Quilcene’s Byron Wilson is an old-school-style head coach.
Wilson’s been at it for more than four decades, running programs in Alaska and Renton before finding his way to Quilcene.
He’s a firm believer in running the football, limiting turnovers and playing smart, ball-hawking defense.
But he’s no caveman when it comes to football’s modern, injury-aware culture.
Senior quarterback/safety Eli Harrison took a blow to the head with the Rangers up 8-0 early in the second quarter of Saturday’s game against league-leading Evergreen Lutheran.
Concussion protocol was administered, and Harrison was cleared to come back and play.
But something was a little off when he went back on the field.
“We noticed he was making decisions that Eli normally just doesn’t make,” Wilson said.
“Holding on to the ball and taking a big loss on a sack rather than throwing it away stood out.
“Eli is a sharp kid and he just doesn’t do that.”
The coaches gave him another look in the Quilcene locker room at halftime and didn’t like what they saw.
Instead of sending him back out on the field to try and keep the Rangers’ hopes at a big win alive, Wilson shut him down and sent him to an ambulance to be taken away for further evaluation.
A mild concussion was the diagnosis.
The Rangers weren’t the same without Harrison. They were outscored 22-0 in the second half,losing 28-8.
But Wilson struck the proper tone, especially considering a week that saw Evergreen High School player Kenney Bui die from an injury suffered during a game, and Adna’s David Young break his neck in two places while making a tackle. According to KOMO News, doctors believe Young will make a full recovery.
“I’ll lose a game before I unnecessarily risk one of my kids,” Wilson said.
“His health matters more to me and this team than putting him out there to try and win. That’s way down the list of priorities.”
■ Run like Spartans.
Forks is overhauling its offense to include more passing. The Spartans have thrown the ball in the past, but not like this.
It’s quite the transition for a program that is used to running the ball over and over and over.
As first-year head coach Craig Shetterly said following the Spartans’ 31-0 loss to Elma on Friday, “We’re teaching them a lot of new things, new concepts.”
But mixed in with the new air approach is the good old, reliable Forks run game.
Kenny Gale carries the largest load, including 25 runs for 131 yards in Friday’s loss.
“It seems like there’s always these great running backs in the lineage of Forks football because of the way they’ve run the ball in the past, and he’s just one of those guys that does it,” Shetterly said.
Garrison Schumack is a similar runner to Gale. Those two, both juniors, get most of the carries this season, but there are even more runners behind them.
“The thing is, we have a pretty good group of running backs, all the way down through to our freshman class,” Shetterly said.
“The fun thing is that we’re going to have some pretty good competition in the upcoming years, guys fighting to get the ball.”
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“Three things learned in high school football” appears each week during the football season in the PDN.
Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-452-2345, ext. 5250, or at mcarman@peninsualdailynews.com.
