Lake Stevens football keeps evolving amid success

LAKE STEVENS — Kekoa Okiyama set himself up underneath the football as it plummeted towards the ground. The Lake Stevens senior secured the ball and cut towards the right side of the field.

Okiyama juked around an incoming defender and found space along the right sideline to charge ahead. Once he crossed midfield, a Lake Stevens coach blew his whistle, signifying the end of the rep.

“Wooo!” Okiyama shouted as he slowed to a stop, celebrating what would have been a trip to the house if not for it simply being a punt return drill in practice.

Of course, none of the Vikings in coverage would overextend themselves to lay out their own teammate during practice, so perhaps Okiyama would have been stopped in a real game. But the brief celebratory moment — just a simple exclamation, not over-the-top by any means — marked a rare instance of any kind of expression.

Lake Stevens football goes about its business, well, like a business. Every drill is executed with focus and intention. When a mistake is made, feedback is given, and it’s on to the next rep. There’s little chatter, no messing around. It’s the look of a championship-pedigree program taking the first steps towards getting back to the mountaintop.

“Our standard is bring your best, every day,” head coach Tom Tri told The Herald at Wesco 4A Media Day on Aug. 31. “Give your best effort, mentally, physically. We can’t control what other teams do, but we can control what we do. ‘It’s not about them, it’s about us.’ That was last year’s motto for us. … But really, I mean, that should be our motto every year.”

After winning 4A state titles in 2022 and 2023, the Vikings fell in the state quarterfinals last season. When the team kicks off its 2025 campaign at home on Friday, the Vikings will face the team that replaced them.

Sumner defeated Chiawana — the team that eliminated Lake Stevens — in triple overtime of the semifinals before clinching the state championship with a last-second field goal against Camas. Now the two programs that collectively own the last three 4A titles will start off the 2025 season with a mutually massive test.

“Taking care of the ball (is) number one,” Tri said about the team’s focus for this matchup. “Executing our plays to our full effort. Communication is going to be huge, just because of what they (Sumner) do offensively and defensively, we want to make sure all 11 guys are doing their job and doing it really well. It starts with communication.”

Tri is entering his 21st season leading the program, and while the culture was established long ago, the details continue to evolve.

The biggest change this year was the offseason conditioning program. Performance coach DeSean Harrell — known as “Coach Diesel” — joined the staff and implemented a new training regimen. The rest of the coaches are already seeing the fruits of that labor. Intense labor.

“He pushed these guys,” Lake Stevens defensive coordinator Eric Dinwiddie said. “We’ve seen a change in attitude. We’ve seen a change in speed, a change in strength, a change in physicality. Practices are not light for us. It’s a battle everywhere.”

The hardest drill, according to middle linebacker Kaiden Peck, is the “110’s,” which are simply dead sprints from the back of one end zone all the way to the other goal line, and the whole team has to complete each one in under 15 seconds. The players repeat until the entire team fails to reach the line in 15 seconds.

This summer, they hit 22 reps, a new high.

“We got enough guys that understand what it’s going to take,” Peck said. “Because of our offseason training, and because of grit days and hard days that we had this offseason, that we just have the capability to go all four quarters, going hard, the whole time, swarming to the ball and all doing our job all together.”

Besides the changes to upgrade the offseason program, there’s of course the natural change of personnel each season as seniors graduate and younger students elevate to varsity. However, few losses across the state were bigger than Kolton Matson, if any. The starting quarterback for the last three-plus seasons and the 2023-24 Washington Gatorade Football Player of the Year, Matson headlined the most successful era in program history.

Following Matson’s graduation, junior Blake Moser takes over the signal-calling and will be counted on to hit the ground running for a roster returning nearly half its starters from last season.

“Just (making) sure that we’re running our routes full-speed,” senior wide receiver/free safety Dylan Phinney said. “Getting our timing down with him, and giving him a good look to give us good balls and succeed.”

From the defensive side of the ball, Peck said he’s testing the mental make-up of the new starters during practices to prepare them for Friday nights.

“I like to chew in (Moser’s) ear a lot,” Peck said. “I’m poking at him all practice-long, him and our running back (junior Javian Ferrell-Gilkey), I’m making sure that they can handle someone, you know, in their ear all day long, getting in their head and still be able to do their job the way it needs to be done and execute properly.”

In addition to Moser’s performance at quarterback, the Vikings’ box will be an x-factor this season. Playing with five defensive backs in their base scheme, Lake Stevens relies on the remaining six defenders to fill the right gaps and get the job done up front.

The entire program feels confident in both of those areas based on the preseason practices. Now all that’s left is to see if it translates to the field. If recent history says anything about Lake Stevens football, it’s a good bet that it will.

“For boxes, how we’ve been ferocious, loud, just chaotic, but it’s controlled,” junior offensive/defensive lineman Brayden Slezak said. “We should be fine. I’m confident in our team. The offseason’s been really tough, right? It’s been hard, but that gives us confidence that we can go out there and perform.”