Sixteen area teams have broken the huddles on fall camp, and the 2023 season looms just on the other side of the month.
With that in mind, The Chronicle’s sports crew — Josh Kirshenbaum, Dylan Wilhelm, Aaron VanTuyl, and Kody Christen — pick their most anticipated matchup in the upcoming season.
Josh’s pick: Tumwater at W.F. West
Things get more serious when the rabbit’s got the gun.
It took just one W.F. West win after 13 years of Tumwater dominance to turn the matchup between the Bearcats and the Thunderbirds into a true rivalry, and now it’s time to see whether last year’s result at Sid Otton Field was a flash in the pan or a shifting of the 2A EvCo guard.
Both sides will be retooled considerably from last year, including new starting quarterbacks. W.F. West has to reload up front after graduating most of the unit that controlled the line all game against Tumwater last year, while Tumwater has to find a new weapon to lead its offense with Carlos Matheney now suiting up at Idaho.
Last season, this matchup all but determined the top of the 2A EvCo in Week 5, and barring a massive surprise, it’s likely to do the same again this fall. Both the Bearcats and T-Birds will get loaded early non-league schedules, then a league game or two before playing more or less for a league title before the calendar flips to October.
Dylan’s pick: Napavine at Lynden Christian
After making the state title game in both of the last two seasons, including a state championship last season, Napavine is gearing up for another deep postseason run.
The Tigers cruised to a league title last season and are the favorites again this fall, but they’ll face a tough test in a non-league matchup when they head north on Sep. 30 to take on Lynden Christian. The Lyncs were one of the best teams at the 1A level last season, going 8-1 and only missing out on the state tournament by losing a Kansas tiebreaker to Nooksack Valley and Mount Baker.
This will be the toughest regular season test the Tigers have faced over the last few seasons, and barring an upset in the first three weeks of the year, they’ll be riding a 22-game regular season winning streak.
Their third non-league game will come two weeks later, when they’ll host Kalama in a rematch of the 2021 state championship game.
Aaron’s pick: Adna at Pe Ell-Willapa Valley
In the grand scheme of things, will this game matter? Perhaps not. It’s a Week 2 game in Menlo on a Friday night.
And yet — Adna’s got a brand-new coach. PWV’s got a new coach. There’s all kinds of familial tie-ins involved. And though it’s still weeks off, we can assume Adna’s going to be smarting from a season-opening loss to Napavine.
Most of those pieces (aside from PWV having a new coach) were in place last year, when Adna topped the Titans 18-14. PWV went on to enter the 2B playoffs as the No. 3 seed and Adna hit a few offensive speedbumps late in the season and went out with a bit of a whimper.
Still, last year’s Week 2 matchup was a litmus test for the rest of the season. There’s no reason the 2023 version, with a ton of new faces involved, can’t be the same.
Kody’s pick: Pe Ell-Willapa Valley at Toledo
This is just one of those matchups that will come down to the best kind of high school football: who wants it more.
The South Division champion versus the North Division (the one with Napavine) runner-up, well into the season, meeting for the first time in two years — what's not to love?
Both sides were fortunate enough to make a state run this past season, and they went about it in a similar way, with a tough, wear-you-down run game. When two teams like this meet in a late-season matchup, it always comes down to who cracks first, who gives up the big plays,or slips up on offense. One team will slip and the other will promptly run them over.
Both teams are faced with a similar need for new faces to step up and get yards out of the backfield. Each program graduated key offensive weapons from the past season, with Toledo losing Geoffrey Glass and PWV dropping Will Clements and Derek Fluke.
Numbers will be called and replacements will be made where necessary, but only time will tell if either program can produce the same success they found last season in the ground game.
