Montesano football coach Terry Jensen had a message for his squad following the Bulldogs’ heartbreaking mid-season loss to rival Hoquiam.
“We told them that next Monday morning this loss won’t define our season,” Jensen said. “What will define our season is what we do from here on out. It was at that point I think they started taking ownership of this team. Every year we tell the kids when you take ownership of the football team, you will go places.”
The next stop on the Montesano tour will be the Tacoma Dome on November 28 for an appearance in the Class 1A State football semifinals where they will have a 1:00 p.m. showdown with King’s, a 42-21 winner over previously undefeated Hoquiam in the quarterfinals.
The Bulldogs punched their ticket to the final four by hammering visiting Mount Baker, 51-21, in the quarterfinals at a chilly Rottle Field, getting 326 total yards and three touchdowns from Kylar Prante, and a pair of TD passes from Jake Herzog to snap the Mountaineers’ 10-game winning streak.
“We played excellent today,” said Prante, the Evergreen 2A/1A League MVP. “We were fast. We executed like we needed to.”
Montesano (10-2) rolled up 546 yards of offense and raced out to a quick 13-0 lead less than 3 minutes into the contest.
“That was huge – to be able to get out in front by two touchdowns right away,” Jensen said. “It just gave us more confidence. We made some nice plays. I thought that was huge because of what they did to us last year.”
In last year’s first round playoff game against Mount Baker, the Bulldogs trailed 21-0 in the first quarter before seeing their rally come up short and their season end with a 41-28 loss to the Mountaineers.
This time around it was Montesano which never gave Mount Baker a time to breathe as the Bulldog’s quick-strike offense needed just four plays to put two touchdowns on the board.
On the game’s second play, Carson Klinger hauled in a 58-yard reception from Herzog, giving Montesano first-and-goal from the eight. Kyle Englund punched it in on the next play to get the Bulldogs on the scoreboard.
The second score came even quicker with a one-play drive which saw Prante take a short pass from Herzog and turn it into a 54-yard touchdown. The rout was on.
“When we play that kind of tempo, when we can play fast like that usually good things happen for us,” Jensen said.
Prante added touchdown runs of 67 and 43 yards and finished with 265 rushing yards on 15 carries. Logan Truax scored on a 2-yard scrambler and added a 29-yard TD reception from Herzog in the second quarter.
Connor Lovell closed out the first half by drilling a 39-yard field goal, pushing the Bulldogs advantage to 24-7 at the intermission.
Truax’s second touchdown early in the fourth quarter made it 44-14, putting the game of reach.
“The talk the last couple weeks has just been believing,” said senior lineman Hutton Napier, who started as a freshman on Montesano’s 2012 state championship squad and finished with a game-high 13 tackles against the Mounties. “Believing we can be the number one team in the state, that we can come out and do what we want to against any team out there. We’re confident.”
That confidence was shaken earlier in the season when the Bulldogs saw their record drop to 5-2 and the likelihood of a league championship all but ended with a tough 10-6 loss to Hoquiam on October 9.
Most teams would have folded following the defeat. Montesano has flourished.
“It’s just the ownership that they’ve taken that really makes the difference. They just care about each other,” Jensen said. “It’s cliché now-a-days about brotherhood in football, but these guys have bought into that. That guy lining up next to them is more important than themselves now. When you get kids that play like that and give up for each other, you can have some special moments and we had them tonight.”
The Bulldogs will face a familiar foe in the semifinals in King’s (11-1). The two programs have played three times in the state playoffs in recent years, facing off for three consecutive years between 2010 and 2012.
Montesano won 17-7 in the 2012 quarterfinals and 31-13 in the 2011 quarterfinals, while the Knights took a 35-20 first round contest in 2010.
King’s led 35-0 at the half and 42-7 at the end of the third quarter against Hoquiam. The Knights only setback this season came in a 49-7 loss to undefeated Archbishop Murphy, a 2A state semifinalist.
“We’re just real proud of our kids right now,” Jensen said. “We are real proud of our coaching staff. They’ve done a great job. They put in a lot of time and don’t get as much credit as they deserve.
