Hawks ground out 27-8 win
Published 9:56 am Friday, February 22, 2008
EDMONDS —By taking the air out of the ball, the Mountlake Terrace football team breathed some life into its offense on Oct. 4.
“Ground” Terrace ran for 284 yards after abandoning its passing game on the way to a 27-8 Western Conference 4A South Division victory over Everett at Edmonds Stadium.
Senior running back Ronald Stiell-Williams led the way with 105 rushing yards and two touchdowns, while Josh Cardin added a tide-turning kickoff return touchdown for the Hawks (3-1).
“I don’t know if we’re going to have Jekyll show up one week and Hyde the next week, but tonight we got it done,” Mountlake Terrace coach Alex Barashkoff said. “We saw something that made us think we could go out and run on them, and then we did it.”
Mountlake Terrace has been so proficient throwing the ball this season that they actually had 300 passing yards by halftime of one game earlier this season. But a look at Everett’s defensive scheme, as well as the eight interceptions Hawks quarterbacks threw last week against Mariner, led Barashkoff to try a different approach this time around.
“We have to be able to do both,” said Barashkoff, whose team ran the ball 48 times against Everett while throwing just eight passes. “We want to be well-balanced. If we see a weakness, we’ll run. Or if we see (a different) weakness, we’ll throw.”
The Hawks turned a potentially disastrous second quarter into a 6-0 lead after going on a 97-yard scoring drive.
On the previous possession, Mountlake Terrace had two long plays called back due to penalties, including a 69-yard touchdown run by Stiell-Williams. That drive eventually stalled, and the next time the Hawks got the ball, they were at their own 3-yard line.
From there, Mountlake Terrace did a very un-Terrace-like thing. The pass-happy Hawks went 97 yards in 13 plays — 12 of which were runs.
Stiell-Williams had 46 rushing yards during the drive, including a 10-yard touchdown run up the middle for a 6-0 lead.
Mountlake Terrace threw only six passes in the first half while running the ball 20 times for 127 yards. Only twice in the second half did the Hawks throw the ball.
“We didn’t expect that running attack,” Everett coach Paul Lawrence said. “They had us on our heels all night. We actually played pretty good pass defense, but we couldn’t stop the run.”
Everett had some success moving the ball, getting into Mountlake Terrace territory on four of its five first-half drives, but couldn’t get into the end zone. The Seagulls’ first two drives stalled when they failed to convert on fourth downs. Their final drive of the first half went as far as the Mountlake Terrace 32-yard line before Everett failed to convert on another fourth down in the final seconds.
The Seagulls’ deficit quickly got larger when Cardin took the opening kickoff of the second half 87 yards for a touchdown. After Brian Hoffman’s two-point conversion run, the Hawks held a 14-0 lead just 16 seconds into the second half.
But Everett responded quickly, as junior Lee Smith went 66 yards for a touchdown on the Seagulls’ third play of the second half. A two-point run by Jamie Lee cut Terrace’s lead to 14-8.
Using another drive made up primarily of runs, Mountlake Terrace went 75 yards in eight plays and expanded its lead on another Stiell-Williams touchdown, this time from 24 yards out.
Sophomore Seth Block added a 1-yard touchdown run with 7:53 remaining in the fourth quarter to give the Hawks a 27-8 lead.
At Edmonds Stadium
M. Terrace0 6 15 6 — 27
Everett0 0 8 0 — 8
MT—Stiell-Williams 10 run (kick blocked)
MT—Cardin 87 kickoff return (Hoffman run)
E—Lee Smith 66 run (Lee run)
MT—Stiell-Williams 24 run (Bang kick)
MT—Block 1 run (run failed)
Scott M. Johnson writes for The Herald in Everett.
