LAKE STEVENS — Tom Tri’s voice boomed out of the Lake Stevens High School locker room and echoed through the hallways on Saturday afternoon.
“When it counted most, you stepped up,” the Vikings head coach bellowed, joyfully, after his two-time defending Class 4A champions overcame a fourth quarter, two-touchdown deficit to knock off Mead 52-49 in the first round of the state playoffs on his home field.
Tri could have been exulting about any one of a long list of crucial moments that helped send Lake Stevens (8-3) to the quarterfinals for the fifth straight season.
Perhaps he was referring to Lucas Mooring, the junior kicker who spent the early part of the week in a hospital bed suffering from pneumonia. He recovered just in time to practice Friday, and then he recovered his own onside kick as the Viking stole a much-needed extra possession. A little later, he booted the ball through sheets of rain and the uprights as his 21-yard field goal became the final points that kept his team alive for a third straight title.
Or was it senior running back Jayshon Limar, who scored five touchdowns and posted 230 total yards?
Maybe Tri was thinking of senior quarterback Kolton Matson, who threw an interception early in the fourth quarter before responding with four scoring drives.
Then there was senior linebacker Keagan Howard, who stuffed a Mead inside reverse running play that had devastated his defense several times in Saturday’s loser-out game.
“We just had to keep fighting,” Tri said, “We kept shooting ourselves in the foot early in the game and in the second half. We’d march the ball down the field and get a couple of penalties and get us out of a drive.
“I’m just proud of the way the guys stepped up, kept fighting, never worried about what the score was and just kept playing until the very end.”
Mooring was perhaps the calmest Viking during the final moments as he lined up to kick and after the game when his teammates alternated between laughing and crying about the wild game. His demeanor enabled him to overcome an earlier missed field goal with seven extra points and the game-winning three-pointer.
“As a kicker, you’ve got to stay locked in — you’ve got to stay focused at all times,” Mooring said. “As I’m going out there, I’m thinking, ‘It’s just every other kick. There’s nothing special about this one.’”
When Mooring’s health improved enough for him to return to practice on Friday, Tri told him not to focus on a special onside kick play “just in case we need it.”
As it turned out, they needed it on Saturday. Down 42-28, Matson hit Blake Moser for 69 yards to set up a six-yard TD pass to Kekoa Okiyama with 10:43 to go.
Mooring lined up for the kickoff, and his boot dribbled just past 10 yards. Suddenly he found himself all alone with the ball, and he pounced on it to set up his offense for a game-tying drive.
“I told him, save your energy, but I want you to work on the dribbler,” said Tri of the conversation he had with Mooring on Friday. “And he does it perfectly.”
Limar and several of his teammates soaked in the nonstop rain along with the final moments as a football player in their home stadium. The sixth-seeded Vikings will play at No. 3 Chiawana at 1 p.m. Nov. 23 at Edgar Brown Stadium in Pasco for the spot in a state semifinal.
“It’s a good way to leave this field…,” said Limar, who rushed 23 times for 125 yards and five TDs and caught five passes for 95 yards. “The way we’ve been working all summer and all year long, I knew we’d be able to get it done.”
That final home game was frustrating at times for the Vikings. Along with drive-killing penalties and a turnover, Mead (9-2) scored touchdowns of 60, 64, 72 and 78 yards, and also scooted 45 yards to set up another TD.
One play in particular maddened the Vikings — an inside reverse handoff to Max Faagau that he’d run three times for 128 yards.
With the score knotted at 49-49, facing third-and-3 at their own 46 with less than 3 minutes remaining, the Panthers ran the play one too many times. That’s when Howard read it and wrecked it for a loss of two yards.
“I knew exactly what play they were going to run,” said Howard, who also caught four passes for 44 yards while playing tight end on offense. “Their guard and tackle were lined up a little bit back, and they hit on the play two or three times for touchdowns. I said, ‘Alright, I know what this is,’ got right through the hole and made the tackle.”
Howard’s tackled forced Mead to punt for the first time since its second offensive drive, and Matson and Limar led Lake Stevens down the field to set up Mooring.
“There’s going to be adversity — we go through it all the time,” said Matson, who completed 18 of 26 passes for 370 yards and a touchdown and carried the ball nine times for 130 yards and a score. “We were kind of punching ourselves in the first half. Second half, we just came out and kind of had a different mindset.”
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