MONROE — While Lake Stevens was garnering most of the attention among Wesco 4A teams a year ago, Monroe was quietly making a name for itself.
The Bearcats started the season 4-0 and outscored their opponents 185-25 in the process. They went on to finish 7-3, dropping a heartbreaker to Skyview in the quad-district playoffs.
The Bearcats’ second consecutive seven-win season largely went unnoticed because the Vikings rolled through the regular season and most of the playoffs. Led by Jacob Eason, who was the Gatorade National Player of the Year, Lake Stevens made it all the way to the Tacoma Dome before falling to Skyline in the state semifinals.
Eason and many of the others who helped the Vikings become a juggernaut are gone — and the Bearcats aren’t flying under the radar anymore. Monroe was selected by the league’s coaches as the overwhelming favorite to win the league title this season.
“We’ve got a name now and we’ve got to live up to that name,” senior quarterback Zach Zimmerman said. “But that’s just by doing our thing. We’re not a big showboating team. We’re going to stick to ourselves and grind together and then we’ll see what the outcome is.”
Zimmerman isn’t recognized on a national level the way Eason was, but he is impressive nonetheless. He recently was ranked eighth by Northwest 9, an elite high school football camp which ranked some of the best quarterbacks from Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
High rankings often come with pressure, but Monroe head coach Michael Bumpus isn’t worried about his quarterback.
“I think with him, if he’s not ranked No. 1 then it’s not good enough,” Bumpus said. “He’s such a gamer, he’s really a free safety, a receiver or a running back, he just happens to have a cannon. His competitiveness is a little different than your average quarterback. As long as there is someone in front of him, this kid is working — and he embraces it.”
There is no question Zimmerman will be a key to the Bearcats’ success, but he’ll have a little help from senior JJ Jerome, who stands next to him in the backfield. While the quarterback gets most of the attention, it may be Jerome that makes everything fire on all cylinders. Monroe runs a spread offense, but Jerome’s ability to run the ball keeps the Bearcats balanced.
“It’s amazing what he does for us back there,” Bumpus said. “I coordinated for three years before this and I was a 65 (percent) to 35 (percent) pass to run guy, but when you have a talent like that in the backfield you have to feed him the ball. What he does for us is he puts eight guys in the box and now we spread them out and we wear them thin.
“A talent like that comes along once in a decade, especially in a town like this — maybe once every 15 years,” Bumpus added. “He definitely makes my job easier as a coordinator. Whatever they try to take away we have an answer for it.”
The Bearcats implemented the spread offense three years ago under former head coach Brett Jay, who led them to a 7-3 season in his only year as Monroe’s head coach. Jay returned to Eastern Washington, where he coached for six seasons before taking the head coaching job at Monroe. He currently is the head coach at Hanford High School.
Jay might have only been with the Bearcats for one season, but his fingerprints are all over the Bearcats’ recent success.
“I definitely thought Brett turned our program around,” Jerome said. “Brett came in and he was young and he took over. He got Monroe under his wing and the whole community started to believe in him.”
It isn’t just the players that give Jay a lot of the credit.
“I call Brett Jay today and we still talk football,” Bumpus said. “I think he really started this winning tradition here. I’m just trying to keep it going.”
The transition from Jay to Bumpus wasn’t difficult because Bumpus kept many of the same philosophies.
His football background didn’t hurt either.
Bumpus played four seasons at Washington State University before signing with the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent in 2008.
“You have to earn respect, it’s not just given to you,” Jerome said. “With (Bumpus), of course a little respect was just earned, but he came in and he got the love from everyone and he got the respect. Brett Jay was a great coach and everyone respected him, but Bumpus did a great job of coming in here and getting respect from everyone and everyone was just like, ‘Yeah, he’s the man. He knows what he’s talking about.’”
The Bearcats bought in right away and didn’t face any adversity until Week 5. After starting 4-0, they were ranked as high as seventh among 4A teams before being upset by Kamiak.
“That was the trap game,” Bumpus said. “We were 4-0 and everyone was praising us and telling us how great we are. We didn’t have the greatest week of practice and we came out and we started slow.”
It wasn’t the best time for a loss, the Bearcats had powerhouse Lake Stevens the following week. The Vikings won 42-14 to hand Monroe its second straight loss, but that doesn’t tell the story of the game. The Bearcats went up 14-0 and had a chance to go up 21-7 late in the first half before turning the ball over deep in the Vikings’ territory. Lake Stevens answered with a touchdown to tie the game at 14 at halftime.
In the second half, Monroe couldn’t hang on to the football and a close game turned into a blowout.
“With a team like Lake Stevens and the firepower they had last year, the kids just knew they were done,” Bumpus said. “You don’t give a team like Lake Stevens that many opportunities. We were so young that once we stopped believing it was a domino effect. I think we’re learning how to win big games and fight back from stuff.”
This year, the Bearcats are that team no one wants to give a second chance.
“If we can get into the playoffs, anything can happen,” Bumpus said. “We look good on paper, but now it’s just about going out there and taking the right mental approach to the game and making sure our guys are healthy. If we don’t win the league this year, it’s a bust and if we don’t make a run in the playoffs, it’s definitely a bust, so we have our expectations for sure.”
Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.
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