Tumwater’s seniors hope best memories are yet to come with Hockinson up next
Memories are there for Tumwater High School’s 14 senior football players.
For Ty Gilliland, there’s the 2A state championship game record 64-yard punt he boomed at the Tacoma Dome two years ago.
Running back Gary Garcia talks about the “brotherhood” and “love for football” among the Thunderbirds.
Lineman Stephen Walker remembers the defensive line messing up so badly an assistant coach yelled at them intensely enough that the man’s nose started to bleed.
As top-seeded Tumwater (12-0) prepares for its state semifinal against fourth-seeded – and two-time defending champion – Hockinson (11-1) at 4 p.m. Saturday at Tumwater District Stadium, though, not one among the 14 has started a nostalgic look back at their high school careers.
“I’d say some of our best memories are ahead of us,” said linebacker Tyler Woods.
Offensive lineman Austin Working agreed.
“It doesn’t matter how many games we have left,” he said. “All that matters is that we take it one game at a time and prepare. We want to go out and win each game; we don’t think too far ahead.”
One game at a time leaves the T-Birds looking at Hockinson, which downed Tumwater, 35-22, in that 2017 state title game and repeated its crown last season. Both teams have a different look from two years ago.
Tumwater already started Dylan Paine, who has rushed for 1295 yards and 23 touchdowns this season. But Jakob Holbrook, Connor Clark and Zane Murphy have graduated. Junior Cody Whalen has added a passing wrinkle to the T-bird offense, helped by sophomore tight ends Austin Terry and Ryan Otton.
“Two years makes a lot of difference to a team,” said Paine. “They’ve graduated a lot of guys, we’ve graduated a lot of guys. Our sophomore class was in the eighth grade at the time. We’re ready this time.”
Hockinson is indeed also different.
Record-setting quarterback Canon Rancanelli has graduated, sharing time at quarterback these days with Christian Moore at Central Washington University. His brother Sawyer, a senior this season, is bound for the University of Washington next fall but missed 2019 with a knee injury. Peyton Brammer, who stepped in for Sawyer Rancanelli as the Hawks’ top receiving threat and caught 33 passes for 703 yards and 11 touchdowns, also went down with a season-ending injury.
Talented lineman Nathan Banderas has been removed from the roster after violating a team rule.
“They’ve done a tremendous job of building a championship climate,” said Tumwater coach Bill Beattie. “Successful programs learn to win when they don’t have all their ducks in a row. That’s what they’ve done. They’re winning because they’ve got a championship culture.
“You look at Lynden, you look at Tumwater and Prosser. What do all those programs have in common? They’ve got a championship mentality. Hockinson’s a newer school, but they’ve developed that.”
The Hawks aren’t winning strictly on tradition and intangibles.
Senior quarterback Levi Crum has completed 56 percent of his passes for 2502 yards and 34 touchdowns. With Bremmer out, he most often throws to Makaio Juarez, Liam Mallory or Jeremiah Faulstick. Each has similar stats, with at least 27 catches, 480 yards and six touchdowns.
Crum is also a threat to run, carrying 118 times for 799 yards and 13 touchdowns. He’s a close second on the team in rushing yardage to Daniel Thompson, who has gained 815 yards and scored five touchdowns on 107 carries.
Comparing opponents would tend to make the T-Birds a heavy favorite. Hockinson’s one loss was a 27-22 home defeat at the hands of none other than Archbishop Murphy during Week 2.
After breezing through their 2A Greater St. Helen’s League season and blasting Centralia, 59-7, in a district playoff game, Hockinson has had more of a challenge during the state playoffs. The Hawks rallied from an eight-point deficit with two third-quarter touchdowns to beat Ellensburg, 22-15, in the round of 16 at Battle Ground, then fought back to beat Lakewood, 29-28, on two late Cody Wheeler rushing touchdowns and a two-point conversion.
“We’ll be way more physical than anyone they’ve played,” said Tumwater running back Hunter Baker.
Though last week’s 48-0 quarterfinal victory over Archbishop Murphy was the eighth time in 12 games the mercy rule caused a running clock down the stretch of a Tumwater game, Beattie believes the Wildcats’ talent level helped boost his team’s playoff intensity.
“We felt it was a battle past three quarters. They had some kids that can flat play,” he said. “A couple of their lineman were really good. It was great for our linemen to have to battle them for so long. We got some of those individual battles that needed to happen for us.”
During the 2017 championship game, Tumwater broke out to a 10-0 lead, but Hockinson chipped away and grabbed an 11-point lead in the first minute of the fourth quarter. With little in the way of a downfield passing game, Beattie’s first T-Bird team had to settle for second place.
A more diverse offense may allow Tumwater to score more quickly if it needs to this time.
“We’ve changed the emphasis of when we throw and how we throw it, paid a lot more attention to the details of our passing game, shored up our blocking,” Beattie said. “(Assistant coach) Rob Hinkle has done a great job of designing pass plays that fit in with our running game and Cody has blossomed as a quarterback.
“Teams want to play eight- and nine-man fronts against us to stop the running game (averaging 414 yards per game from the wing-T set in 2019) and I don’t blame them. Now they have to be a little more cautious that we might come out and throw the ball on first down on our own 20-yard line. It’s not just going to be buck, sweep, trap right off the bat.”
In the other 2A semifinal, third-seeded and frequent Tumwater foe Lynden (9-2) travels south to Mt. Tahoma to take on second-seeded Steilacoom (10-2) and its wide-open offense, led by quarterback Chance McDonald and five-star receiver Emeka Egbuka.
Tumwater District Stadium will also be the site of something Thurston County residents usually have to travel to see: eight-man football. Third-seeded Almira Coulee Hartline meets second-seeded Naselle at 1 p.m. Saturday, promising to add to the traffic and parking woes in and around the stadium parking lots.
All three of the games will be streamed live over the ESN/NFHS Networks.
This story was originally published November 29, 2019 at 4:00 PM.