Elma football was fed up with losing. Now, the Eagles are off to their best start in 21 years

Enough was enough.

For a long time, Elma High School was a power among small school football programs in Washington. But, by the time running back Taitum Brumfield was a sophomore in 2016, it had already been 11 years since the Eagles had reached the state playoffs.

Their 2-7 season that year wasn’t much to be proud of. Neither was the 3-6 bid in 2017.

“I didn’t want that, that’s not how I wanted my high school career to be,” Brumfield said.

A native of Somerset, Texas, which is south of San Antonio, Brumfield hadn’t grown up in Elma, but those who had weren’t fond of losing, either.

“There’s 14 or 15 of us who starting playing together back in fourth and fifth grade,” junior quarterback Cody Vollan said. “The chemistry is there.”

Both the long-time Elma crew and the newcomers decided to make a change.

They hit the weight room harder in the offseason, committed themselves to being more disciplined at practice.

The result has been the Eagles’ best start since their state championship season in 1997, an undefeated 5-0 record heading into Class 1A Evergreen Conference play.

“What the juniors and seniors have done is gelled quite well when they were freshmen and sophomores,” third-year coach Ron Clark said. “Some were playing JV, and some of them struggled to play varsity as freshmen which, even in 1A, is not something you want to do.”

Both Brumfield and Vollan credit Elma’s offensive linemen — Ben Bridge, Alejandro Hernandez, Jacob Garcia, Blake Foster, Noah McGaffey and Justin Elliott — with much of their offensive success.

“Running backs and quarterbacks couldn’t do anything without the five guys up front,” Brumfield said.

Nonetheless, he and Vollan have posted big numbers for Elma.

Brumfield has already rushed for 608 yards this season, scoring nine touchdowns, including two from the long side of the field on pass receptions from Vollan.

“Taitum is exactly what you’d want in a senior leader,” Clark said. “He’s physically strong and he’s worked really hard on his speed.”

“He’s determined to be the best,” Vollan said. “He never slows down, he’s always churning those legs, trying to get extra yards.”

Vollan’s story comes with a bit of a twist.

A stellar wing-T and occasional spread formation quarterback, he’s passed for 551 yards and rushed for 311 more, accounting for 14 total touchdowns. Yet, he’s called signals for a surprisingly short period of time.

A fullback for much of his time in youth and middle school football, Vollan showed enough to convince his coach a position switch might be in order.

“I told him his freshman year, ‘Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be the quarterback of the future,’ ” Clark said.

That winter, Avery Brown, then the Eagles’ starting quarterback, transferred.

“I said to Cody, ‘The future is right now,’ ” Clark said.

There was one slight problem.

“Freshman year I was on JV and I could not throw a football,” Vollan said. “The past two years I’ve spent a lot of time in the offseason working on the fundamentals of throwing.”

Combined with his mental approach to the game, an improvement in Vollan’s passing ability has helped make the difference for Elma.

“Cody is dedicated to being excellent,” Clark said. “He is extremely meticulous. He wants to know everything. He thinks about it, he dwells upon it. He wants to be really good and he trains for it year-round. He’s a self-made quarterback.”

Both coach and players see room for improvement as the Eagles prepare to open Class 1A Evergreen Conference play next week at home against Hoquiam.

“There’s a huge upside. We’re not even close to being good enough,” Clark said. “The effort is there. We’ve got to continue to grow in our football knowledge and our awareness on the field. We’ve had a lot of broken plays go for good yardage, but we can be better.”

Brumfield agrees.

“We need to improve our discipline and execution,” he said. “Right now, physically, we’re a pretty good team. But we’re giving up some plays defensively that we shouldn’t give up.

“On offense, our plays need to be crisper, quicker. We need to get out to our blocks and our routes faster and cleaner and more efficiently.”

With a surprising 60 players out for football, Clark hopes the upswing in the Eagles’ fortunes can be sustained.

“We played a C-team game and a JV game at the same time on Monday, which is unheard of for Elma,” he said. “It makes for a lot of blue jerseys at the pep assemblies.”