Kamiak uses ball-control offense to down Edmonds-Woodway

LYNNWOOD – With a quarterback the quality of Gary Rogers, Kamiak doesn’t conjure an image of a grind-it-out football team.

Rogers got his yards through the air – 121 and two touchdown passes – but Kamiak established itself early with ball control and never backed away from it in a 28-8 victory over Edmonds-Woodway on Friday night at Edmonds Stadium.

Kamiak rolled to 2-0 in the Western Conference South Division and 3-0 overall. Edmonds-Woodway is 0-2, 0-3.

“I expect us to play hard and play intelligently, and I think we came out and executed tonight,” Kamiak coach Dan Mack said.

That was never more apparent than on the Knights’ first possessions of the first and second halves, when they scored after long drives.

Edmonds-Woodway had taken the opening kickoff to within six yards of the end zone – with star running back Glenn Gallagher carrying six times for 31 yards – before Kamiak forced a fumble and Nate Hadley recovered.

Kamiak began a 13-play, 85-yard drive, leaning heavily on running back Josh Reed. He carried five times for 42 of his 43 yards in the game, finishing the drive with a 9-yard run around left end for a 6-0 Kamiak lead.

“We drove down and didn’t finish. They drove down and did finish,” Edmonds-Woodway coach John Gradwohl said. “That’s huge. That’s really the difference in the game. On the key downs, they were able to convert, and on key downs we didn’t.”

Kamiak scored on its next possession, another time-consuming drive that finished with John Leary’s 5-yard touchdown run, and then his 2-point conversion run for a 14-0 lead that stood at the half.

Kamiak then took the second-half kickoff and made its biggest statement of the game.

The Knights drove 65 yards in 12 plays and consumed more than eight minutes off the clock. Kamiak converted twice on third down and twice on fourth down to keep the drive alive, then scored when Rogers threw 19 yards to Chris Knight, who made a diving catch in the end zone. Jordan Hawkinson’s kick made it 21-0.

“They took eight minutes off the third quarter,” Gradwohl said. “Any chance of us coming back, when you have an eight-minute drive, that sucks the blood right out of you. I thought we played a better second half, but we were behind the eight ball. When they drove down and scored, it didn’t give us much time.”

Kamiak scored again on its next possession, Rogers passing seven yards to Mitch Hermes for the Knights’ final touchdown.

Edmonds-Woodway scored on the first play of the fourth quarter when Gallagher ran around left end for a 3-yard touchdown run. Quarterback Phillip Baker’s pass to Andrew Vaabeene for the 2-point conversion made it a 28-8 score.

Gallagher, who ran for 533 yards in Edmonds-Woodway’s first two games, finished with a game-high 91 on 23 carries Friday.

Kamiak’s Tony Virata carried 16 times for 89 yards.

“Our young kids seem to get better each week,” Mack said. “We wanted to come out and establish right away. We knew what we wanted to do with the football and the kids came out and executed against a tough Edmonds-Woodway team.”

At Edmonds Stadium