SEQUIM — Jack Wiker struggled to contain himself on the sideline.
Forced to sit out the first half of Friday night’s Sequim-Port Angeles football showdown, the Wolves junior fumed silently as his team made mistake after mistake with the Olympic League title on the line.
Fumbled snaps, blown assignments, missed tackles . . . all of it bubbled up inside Wiker before coming out in one primal scream as Sequim went down 7-0 in the second quarter.
“I wanted to get in there really bad,” Wiker said. “I knew I could do it if I could just get out there.”
Unfortunately for the Roughriders, he was right.
Wiker guided the Wolves to four touchdowns in five second-half possessions, and Sequim rallied past an injury-riddled Port Angeles squad for a 27-14 win on a drizzly autumn night in Dungeness Valley.
The win secured the Wolves’ third straight outright league championship and a date with Eatonville (3-4 in SPSL, 4-5 overall) at North Kitsap High School in the Class 2A preliminary state playoffs next Saturday at 7 p.m.
The Wolves (6-1, 8-1) will be going for their sixth straight 2A state playoff appearance in that game.
It’s a position they would not have even been in had Kingston not upset North Kitsap 27-20 the night before in Poulsbo.
“It’s an emotional ride,” said Sequim head coach Erik Wiker, whose team rebounded from last week’s 33-13 loss at North Kitsap.
“Coming into school this [Friday] morning just about every one of them knew the score. It was like, OK, this is our league championship.”
“It definitely got the kids excited.”
Port Angeles (4-3, 6-3) dropped all the way to fourth place with its third straight loss, putting it in a loser-out pigtail playoff at Renton (3-3 in Seamount, 4-5 overall) on Tuesday.
The Riders must win that in order to move on to a 2A preliminary state playoff at Franklin Pierce (6-1, 7-2) next Saturday.
“It’s tough to have a turnaround like that,” Port Angeles coach Tom Wahl said Friday. “I don’t even know who we’re playing yet, so I’ve got to figure out how to get some film on them, and figure out what we’re going to do from there.”
With star quarterback/linebacker Frank Catelli still nursing a groin injury, Erik Wiker called on Cody Field and Jack Wiker to guide the Wolves’ attack Friday.
After Field and company struggled to move the ball against Port Angeles’ 3-4 defensive front in the first half, Jack Wiker finally was able to take the controls after the break.
The junior responded emphatically, piling up 141 yards of offense and running in touchdown runs of 1, 3 and 13 yards to guide the Wolves to their fourth straight win over Port Angeles.
“Once we got out there, we started rolling,” Jack Wiker said. “It wasn’t just me, everybody came out knowing that we had a bad first half, we could play better and we just came out with a better intensity.”
Indeed, the Wolves turned the tide after a stunning first half that saw the Riders come out in previously unseen offensive and defensive formations.
Armed with a skeleton roster minus several key starters — including Eli Fiscalini (WR/LB), Skyler Gray (WR/DB), Cameron Braithwaite (WR/DB) and Nick Ioffrida (OL/DL) — the Rider coaching staff opted to install Kingston’s offensive and defensive sets for the rivalry game.
Injured quarterback Keenen Walker lined up at fullback wearing a hard cast, with sophomore Larsson Chapman under center in a power I-formation.
The gimmick worked well in the first half when PA relied almost exclusively on running back Dylan Brewer and out-gained Sequim 148 yards to 36.
Brewer rumbled for 109 yards and a score during that time and finished with 208 yards and two touchdowns on 39 carries.
A number of Rider miscues in Sequim territory, however, kept them from capitalizing early on.
That included three turnovers on the Wolves’ side of the field, two on interceptions by Sequim’s Kyler Johnston and Field near the goal line, and a pair of costly penalties inside the 20-yard line.
Sequim had three first-half turnovers of its own, with the second one — a fumbled snap recovered by Brewer at the Sequim 4 — setting up a 1-yard Brewer TD run for a 7-0 lead with six minutes to go in the half.
“I think we played awesome for throwing this offense all together at once,” Brewer said.
“We would have won this game in the beginning if we hadn’t shot ourselves in the foot a few times right on the goal-line there.”
Once Jack Wiker entered the game in the third quarter, the tenor of the game changed dramatically.
He and speedy running back Lopaka Yasumura — lined up next to one another in Sequim’s one-back shotgun offense — gashed the Rider defense as they scored on three straight drives.
Wiker capped each of those possessions with scoring runs, his last a dazzling 11-yard sweep that saw him spin out of one tackle, then dive across the goal line through two PA defenders for a 19-7 Wolves lead.
Jack Wiker finished with 68 yards rushing on 15 carries while completing 9 of 14 passes to four different receivers for 73 yards.
“He changes the dynamic of [the offense],” Erik Wiker said. “He was really working on making up for his being out.
“He’s been encouraging Lopaka all week, telling him he’s going to do a great job while he’s in there.
“And he’s an emotional player, and I think people can feed off of him.”
Port Angeles regained some momentum when Brewer busted loose for a 51-yard scoring run with a little more than seven minutes left in the game.
But Sequim’s Christian Miles returned the ensuing kickoff 72 yards to the Rider 18 to get it right back.
Yasumura ran the ball into the end zone two plays later from 13 yards out, and Sequim was soon on its way to another league title.
“I was just hyped, me and my team, and I believed we could do anything when we went out on that field,” said Yasumura, who finished with 90 yards of offense, 70 of which came on 15 carries.
“It was just an awesome experience.”
Sequim senior Tyler Forshaw led the Wolves with seven receptions for 31 yards and also had an interception on defense.
Without Catelli taking snaps, the Wolves relied more on the run game to amass 221 total yards.
Meanwhile, the Riders couldn’t have looked much different from the their previous shotgun spread incarnation when Walker was the quarterback.
Port Angeles attempted just three passes on the game out of the I-formation — all three were intercepted — and ran for 269 yards on 51 carries.
That included 58 yards for Walker on 10 totes.
“In the second half, they just were running their offense a little faster,” Brewer said. “I don’t think we let down or anything, we just weren’t getting set up fast enough.
“We stayed in there as long as we could. We fought to the end.”
Sequim 27, Port Angeles 14
Port Angeles 0 7 0 7— 14
Sequim 0 0 13 14— 27
Second Quarter
PA—Dylan Brewer 1 run (Tamrat Haskins kick)
Third Quarter
S—Jack Wiker 1 run (Mitch Koonz kick)
S—Wiker 3 run (kick blocked)
Fourth Quarter
S—Wiker 13 run (pass failed)
PA—Brewer 51 run (Haskins kick)
S—Lopaka Yasumura 9 run (Wiker run)
Individual Stats
Rushing— PA: Brewer 39-208, Keenen Walker 10-58, Nathan Angevine 1-2, Nick Lasorsa 1-1. S: Yasumura 15-70, Wiker 15-68, Victor Gonzalez 2-15, Cody Field 6-(minus 22).
Passing—PA: Larsson Chapman 0-2-2, 0; Angevine 0-1-1, 0. S: Wiker 9-14-0, 73; Field 5-7-1, 17.
Receiving—PA: No receptions. S: Tyler Forshaw 7-31, Christian Miles 2-24, Yasumura 3-20, Nick Ramirez 1-11, Michael Ballard 1-4.