MOSSYROCK — The trenches at the Mossyrock football team’s practice Tuesday looked a bit more crowded than the Vikings have become used to.
Since dropping down to the 1B ranks, Mossyrock has played three seasons of 8-man football, going 19-8 in 27 games. Come the second week of September, the Vikings will try to stay on top of the District 4 mountain, after going undefeated in the regular season and making the 1B state tournament.
But first, Mossyrock is set to jump back up to the 11-man game for one week, opening its season against 2B Pe Ell-Willapa Valley.
So Tuesday, the Vikings had five linemen and an extra receiver on the field from their normal sets, re-learning how to run an 11-man offense.
“It’s been fun,” coach Eric Ollikainen said. “It’s tough to get our guys enough playing time when you’ve got a team this big. It gave us something to be excited for all summer long, it gave the kids something to work hard for all summer long. A lot of new kids who deserved opportunities are finally going to get them.”
It’s not terribly uncommon for 1B and 2B schools to match up against each other early in the fall with one team making the adjustment — though usually it involves the 2B school dropping down to 8-man. It can, however, create a headache for coaches in training camp, who have to install both the normal playbook and the version adjusted for more or fewer players.
Ollikainen isn’t too worried about that, though, with the Vikings returning nine starters — six of whom started on both sides of the ball — from last year’s squad. Instead, the focus has been solely on the 11-man book, though he did say they’ll practice a bit of 8-man before they go to Winlock on Saturday for a 1B jamboree.
“I’m not running exactly what I’d choose to run if I had an 11-man team all year long,” he said. “I’m just trying to make it work with our terminology and our system. It’s still football though. You’ve still got to block and tackle.”
And as he noted, the blocking part of things is a lot more important in the 11-man game.
“It’s a lot tougher to score,” he said. “In 8-man, there are one-on-ones everywhere, and if you’ve got the athletes, they’re off to the races. There are 50-point swings in games pretty regularly. Getting offenses going is a lot tougher in 11-man, so that’s going to be a good challenge for us.”
Mossyrock went 3-4 in its last full season in the 2B ranks in 2019, after having to cancel the first two games of the season due to a lack of eligible players.
That won’t be a problem at all this fall, as the Vikings had enough players out Tuesday to run a full 11-on-11 drill, with another team’s worth of subs watching behind the play.
“We’ve got some numbers, we’ve got some size,” Ollikainen said. “It’s coming along. It feels good, and I’m excited to get the season rolling.”
Once Sept. 1 passes, Mossyrock will be back in 8-man football the rest of the way, kicking off with a home game against Quilcene in Week 2. The Vikings blasted the 2021 state runners-up by 38 points last season, in what turned out to be their second-closest game of the season.
“If I did it right,” Ollikainen said, “the transition will be pretty seamless.”
