'The Three-peat,' and the 'Near Trifecta' are worth looking at one more time
As we head into a new high school athletic season and a new era for some programs. I’d like to reflect on a couple of special moments from 2017-18.
There was “The Three-Peat” and the “Near Trifecta” and some of the guys who led the way to great things.
The Royal Knights won their third consecutive 1A state football championship last season with yet another great run to the Tacoma Dome. Royal became the seventh school in Washington state history to win three or more consecutive WIAA titles at the same level, and just the second 1A school to do it.
They go into the 2018 season with a 41-game winning streak, which is ranked sixth in the nation according the MaxPreps.
The numbers speak for themselves, but it’s the faces behind the facemask that make Royal football what it is. Guys like Corbin Christensen, Angel Farias, Sawyer Jenks, Jack Diaz, Alonso Hernandez and the lads picked up the torch and carried it in 2017.
Now we’ll see who is ready to stand tall for Royal in 2018. Four-peat? I say that just to listen to the hairs on Washington Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame coach Wiley Allred’s neck stand on end.
Then there was the near trifecta.
The Almira/Coulee-Hartline Warriors were a defensive stop away from winning in double overtime at the 1B state basketball tournament. They’d already won their second state football championship in three years that fall. They went on to go undefeated all the way to the 1B state baseball championship, in addition to winning a state softball championship the same day. And, despite a loss in double-overtime to Sunnyside Christian, whom they embarrassed in the football state title game, they had a season to remember.
I can still picture Warrior basketball coach Graham Grindy gaze as he tracked Maguire Isaak’s final shot of the first overtime. Isaak took the inbounds, dribbled a couple of steps across the midcourt line and let fly the hopes and dreams of Almira, Coulee City and Hartline. The shot bounced just a fraction off the front of the rim, ever so close to being a Michael Jordan walk-off moment. They didn’t bring home the big ball, but it was a game for the ages.
It was a special year for three small communities, whose kids rose to the occasion. The football team went into the Tacoma Dome to face a previously unbeaten team.
Isaak raised the bar so high it might be decades before his name is ever erased from the 1B record books.
The junior quarterback finished with 611 total yards and 12 touchdowns and the Warriors exploded for 722 total yards on 92 plays in their runaway 84-60 victory over No. 1 Sunnyside Christian. The Warriors (12-2) set the new 1B state records for most points scored in the championship game (84) and most total yards (722).
That was Payton Nielsen’s last football game. They hoisted the trophy one more time in the Dome.
“Look at this place, we won, our fans are going nuts, and it’s my birthday,” he told me afterwards. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
I have covered a lot of football at several different levels, but I quite enjoyed following an 8-man program whose entire fan base fits in one section at the Tacoma Dome. They were close at the Spokane arena and finished up with one more state championship with a class that’s played together since they were old enough throw a ball.
But what I enjoy the most about Almira/Coulee-Hartline and Royal City is the community pride in their young people. It doesn’t last forever, but the moment can last a lifetime.