ACH Warriors head west to take on Naselle in 1B quarterfinals

COULEE CITY — If the No. 5 Almira/Coulee-Hartline Warriors had to go any further west to play Saturday’s 1B state quarterfinal game, they’d drive right into the Pacific Ocean.

Warriors head coach Brandon Walsh is hoping that West Coast weather holds off one more week when ACH takes on No. 3 Naselle (8-2) at 1 p.m. at Montesano High School.

He’s not particularly worried about the four-and-half hour bus ride, but the Warriors (9-2) are on the fast track and he’s hoping wet field conditions don’t slow things down as they chase their second state championship in the past three years.

“In my opinion, the weather is going to be the intangible,” said Walsh, whose team won the 1B state title in 2015. The forecast is calling for rain and if it’s dumping down rain it’s a disadvantage because of our style of offense.

“It’s going to make it harder to throw the football and catch it. Obviously we have a pretty good quarterback (Maguire Isaak) and receiving corps, but if we’re limited in what we can do there it might make the game closer than we’d like.”

Isaak is averaging 213.9 yards in total with a nice little passing game that's contributing 133.9 of that. The 6-foot, 170-pound junior has a variety of weapons with receivers like Payton Nielsen (6-4, 180, sr.), Parker Zappone (5-10, 160, sr.) and Gage Burchill (5-8, 145, jr.). The Warriors have the ability to score in a hurry, putting up 38 points in the second quarter in last week’s 72-46 victory over Colton in the state play-in game.

They will face a whole new set of challenges against Naselle, which knocked defending state champion Neah Bay out last week with a 72-20 victory.

“They’re big up front. They go 200, 220 and 250 across the offensive line,” Walsh said. “Their quarterback (Cole Dorman) is pretty quick, but he’s not their featured runner from what I can tell. They have a fullback (Erik Lund) that’s about 190 pounds that runs hard. They also like to run a quick little scat-back (Oggie Lopez).”

Dorman had five touchdown passes against Neah Bay, spreading the ball around to Josh Townsen, Fa'aoso Tutu'u and Antonio Nolan, so the Comets can let it fly much like the Warriors.

In the two ACH losses this season, Sunnyside Christian and Odessa were both able to run the ball up the A-gap, right at the heart of the Warrior defense. Walsh said they have been working to shore up that tactic to see if they can’t force Naselle into a one-dimensional passing attack.

“We’ve been scheming to change our defensive front a little bit, so if they try to grind it out against us we can stop the middle run. That’s our first priority,” he said. “We need to tackle well and we think our speed defensively will cause them a lot of problems.”

On the other side, Naselle rides high on an opportunistic defense that not only shut down the defending state champions, but scored off the turnovers created on a fumble recovery returned for a touchdown and a safety, to go along with three pass interceptions.

“I like our chances,” Walsh said. “We’ll go over the night before so we’re not spending all day on the bus on game day. We’ll control that environment a little bit, get up ready to play.”

The good news is that ACH is on the opposite side of the bracket as No. 1 Sunnyside Christian and No. 4 Odessa. The winner of Saturday’s ACH-Naselle game will face the winner of Lummi-Tacoma Baptist in the semifinals.

Rodney Harwood is a sports writer with the Columbia Basin Herald and can be reached at rharwood@columbiabasinherald.com