A few employees won’t be working their usual Saturday shift today at Ellersick Brewing Co. in Lynnwood.
That’s because brew pub owner Rick Ellersick and three of his sons who work with him will be watching the youngest Ellersick brother, Casey, lead the Mountlake Terrace High School football team in its first playoff game in the school’s 49-year history.
“We’re just trying to figure out how we can shift everything around so we can all be at the game,” Rick Ellersick said.
The team, which this year had its first six-win season since 1974, qualified for the Westco 4A South Division playoffs after defeating Mukilteo’s Kamiak High School 21-12 on Oct. 30, in a packed Edmonds Stadium.
“It’s huge,” said Nolan Johnson, 21, a 2006 Mountlake Terrace graduate and pub employee. “To think that they haven’t been in the playoffs, it’s amazing.”
Tony Ellersick, a 2008 graduate, was the team’s starting quarterback for three of the four seasons he played football. Brothers Brian and Steve also played.
“We always wanted to be the first class to have a plaque in the trophy case,” he said.
Former Mayor Pat Cordova, whose two sons played football at Mountlake Terrace High, called the playoff achievement “a long journey of developing confidence.”
“Football’s just an area we haven’t been able to get the kids really involved and enthused,” she said. “I think having homecoming the night of the big game (Oct. 30) helped.”
Alumni turned out in droves for the Kamiak game.
Jessica Bos, 23, the brew pub’s bar manager, was a cheerleader at the school before graduating in 2004. She said winning gives everyone a lift.
“It’s an amazing feeling, there’s so much excitement and it’s a lot more fun,” she said. “It’ll be a really packed stadium, I’m sure.”
Coach Tony Umayam returned to his alma mater six years ago to take the head coaching job. His second year on the job, the team finished 5-5, snapping a 19-year streak of losing seasons.
He called the win over Kamiak “an experience that I will never forget.”
The 1990 graduate noted that several coaches for other sports are also Mountlake Terrace High alumni.
“There’s something unique that does draw alumni back,” he said.
Current and former leaders of the Mountlake Terrace Youth Athletic Association say the team’s success this year has excited younger players. Many of the current team’s players got their football training as members of the league’s youth teams.
For years, residents and school boosters resigned themselves to the fact that the football team just wasn’t that good, said Bill Hamilton, who coaches 12- to 14-year-old boys. Athletes were more likely to play basketball or other, more successful sports, he said.
“With this success, that can be a big windfall for them,” he said. “If they can kind of springboard with this success and get a lot more turnout, that will really help them out.”
Greg Schwab, the school’s principal — and a former collegiate football player — said he’s noticed how the team’s success has generated a lot of excitement among youth league players, who’ve shown up at games wearing Mountlake Terrace High School jerseys.
“That’s what you want,” he said. “You want these kids to look up to those players and think they could be that player one day.”
The team’s success has rubbed off on other school activities, creating a special feeling at the school and in the community, Schwab said.
“I was driving down the street the other day and I saw my first ‘Go Hawks’ sign,” he said. “You just don’t see that.”
Oscar Halpert: 425-339-3429, ohalpert@heraldnet.com.
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