OPINION: Two teams, two different directions

A weekly column about East County football

At this point, still relatively early in the season, East County’s football picture consists of two teams going in very different directions.

Montesano remained undefeated and notched its third consecutive convincing victory – second straight on the road – on Friday by taking down Castle Rock, 42-0.

Elma will have to continue the quest for its first win of the season after falling in discouraging fashion to previously winless Aberdeen, 48-20.

MONTE

For the second consecutive week, a Bulldog junior found the end zone several times. Dakoyta Reninger followed up Carson Klinger’s 7-score performance against Sequim in week two by scoring four touchdowns of his own on Friday.

Klinger had an impressive game in his own right, leading the Bulldogs in rushing yards and tackles against Castle Rock. Junior quarterback and defensive back Trevor Ridgway also has been impressive on both sides of the ball.

Montesano has the personnel to be a winner for the foreseeable future.

Although this trio of juniors projects well for next season’s Bulldogs, make no mistake about this team. Montesano is built to win now. Key seniors like Taylor Rupe, Nathan Olson, Nick Chapman and Hayden Klinger (just to name a few) don’t always get the glory, but fill in key roles on coach Terry Jensen’s squad.

Jensen told The Daily World after Friday’s win that he likes the effort he sees in this team, but that they are still young and need to clean up their mistakes. Which means that, according to the team’s head coach, the Bulldogs are not only working hard, but also have room to improve.

That doesn’t bode well for the rest of the Evergreen 1A League.

ELMA

Unless they are able to improve quickly and significantly, Elma’s loss to Aberdeen seems to be a bad sign about the Eagles’ chances of success this season.

Montesano and Hoquiam – which makes up half of Elma’s league schedule – easily handled Aberdeen in weeks one and two respectively, so seeing the Bobcats rough up the Eagles in week three wasn’t a promising sign.

The Eagles seem to be suffering from a variety of issues.

They have struggled to start games well. For the second consecutive game, Elma was forced to play from behind after struggling early in the game.

The one positive to take from the last two losses for the Eagles is a never-quit attitude. From where I was standing, the Eagles appeared to give great effort right up to the final buzzer and head coach Ron Clark echoed that sentiment in his post-game comments to The Daily World.

Lack of depth and experience appears to be another pitfall for the Eagles. Elma is returning very few players who played a significant role in last year’s offense.

Running back Ira Hartford logged some playing time and contributed on offense for the Eagles last season. The senior also grinded out 103 tough yards with very little running room against Aberdeen.

It didn’t help that Elma’s only returning all-league selection, lineman Oscar Escalante, was on the sidelines in a sling on Friday.

The silver lining for Eagles fans is the fact that they have a player like Hartford to carry the load, and some talented athletes to rally around him as they gain experience throughout the season.