QUILCENE — The Quilcene football team was racked with illness this week and was down to just 10 players in pads at practice one point last week.
The struggles showed in a 60-34 loss Saturday to a suddenly red-hot Concrete team that has streamrolled all of its opponents this season.
Coach Trey Beathard said one play in particular just before the end of the first half seemed to epitomize this game. On a long pass play, a Quilcene defensive back batted the ball down, but the ball hit a Concrete player in the knee, bounced up and was caught in midair by another Concrete player who ran it in for a touchdown.
“It was that kind of day for us,” he said. “But Concrete deserved to win. They outplayed us.”
Andrew Perez had a touchdown run of 54 yards and another touchdown of 10 yards. Dominick Smith had a 30-yard touchdown run and Oliver Hopkins had two touchdown receptions of 60 yards and five yards on passes from Perez.
Smith finished the game with 13 rushes for 137 yards and one catch for 30 yards. Perez ran it seven times for 94 yards. Mason Iverson had five rushes for 23, while Eli Iverson had three rushes for 15 yards and Robert Evans ran once for 10 yards.
“I still think we’re going to have a good season. We just didn’t have a good day,” Beathard said.
Quilcene (0-1, 0-3) plays at Charles Wright (1-2) at 1 p.m. Saturday. Charles Wright, a Nisqually League school, is playing 1B level football this season.
Clallam Bay 20, Mary M. Knight 13
MATLOCK — The Clallam Bay football team, racked with COVID, managed to pull out a 20-13 win over Mary M. Knight in six-man football.
“Fitness got it done,” said coach George Patecek.
With players out with illness, the Bruins (2-0) only had three experienced players available — Mauricio Cruz-Lopez, William Hull and Dylan Simmons — and combined them with some inexperienced eighth-graders.
“Those three students, you have to hand it to them,” Patecek said. “[Mary M. Knight] had some big boys. They made it super tough.”