NAPAVINE — Though a Raymond-South Bend loss last week against Pe Ell-Willapa Valley dampened hopes of a battle of unbeatens, the No. 1 Napavine football team still came in with plenty of motivation to send a message on senior night against the No. 6 Ravens Friday night.
And just like all season, the Tigers sent yet another statement in a 54-0 demolition of a top-10 foe.
The win locked up yet another Southwest Washington North league title, though after taking care of business against the Ravens, the Tigers have much higher goals than what they accomplished Friday night.
“We’ve never been a league title type of team,” Tigers coach Josh Fay said. “It’s a nice accolade to add to the shelf, but our goals are further down the road. Hopefully we can get close to those. That first half of football is about as good as you’re going to see a team execute, it was nice to send our seniors out like that.”
The Tigers put 34 points on the board before the Ravens even picked up a first down, and held the normally potent RSB offense to just 33 total yards and a goose egg on the scoreboard.
Offensively, it was the usual suspects once again that spurred the offense, with Ashton Demarest distributing the ball and commanding the fine-tuned machine to near perfection.
The junior quarterback was 8 of 11 passing for 141 yards and a scoring toss to Colin Shields, and rushed in three first half touchdowns with 85 total yards on the ground.
His growth over the season has not gone unnoticed by his coach and teammates, alike.
“He does the things everyone sees, he makes good throws and good runs, but the way he orchestrates the offense is where he’s really improved,” Fay said. “Getting people lined up and communicating in the huddle, he’s pretty invaluable to us on his intangibles alone.”
The Tigers ran for 227 yards, with Austin Chapman trotting in a pair of scores and Franklin Pihl adding another in the fourth with the second-team, all behind an offensive line that replaced three starters, including current Utah football player Keith Olson.
“Those guys felt slighted when Keith left, there was a lot of talk about us losing guys up on the line,” Fay said. “I think they’ve taken that personally and they’ve demonstrated they’re pretty good without those guys.”
But more than the league title, or anything else, the Tigers wanted to send a message across the state. In a dominant win against a one-loss, top-6 program in RSB, Napavine did just that.
“I think our guys wanted to come out and make a statement saying we’re pretty good,” Fay said. “I saw we moved in some polls, our guys paid attention to that. At the end of the day, these guys want to come out here and play good football, and they played well tonight. For 24 minutes, it was about as good as it gets.
