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POLL RESULTS: Lake Stevens football is the choice

Published 9:16 am Thursday, November 8, 2018

By Nick Patterson

The voters are going with tradition.

This week’s Seattle Sidelines poll asked readers to weigh in on the high school football state playoffs, which kick off Friday. There are three local teams that remain alive. Lake Stevens in 4A and Snohomish in 3A have first-round state games Friday night, while Darrington in 1B has a game Friday evening to get into the state playoffs.

Therefore, this week’s question was: Which local team will advance the furthest in this year’s state football playoffs? Here’s how you voted:


Add the two together and 71 percent of the voters picked Lake Stevens as the local school that will got the furthest. Snohomish was a distant second at 22 percent and Darrington finished third at 7 percent. These seem to be accurate numbers, as they were almost identical between the Twitter poll and the blog poll.

The question we have to ask ourselves is how much of this vote is based on what people think, and how much was based on school allegiance? If you’ve been voting in or observing our weekly Prep Athlete of the Week polls, you’ve probably noticed that the vote sometimes seems based more on whichever team’s fan base managed to mobilize for the vote rather than actual performances. So was that the case here? Did Lake Stevens earn the lion’s share of the vote on merit, or because more Lake Stevens fans decided to vote?

I can’t answer that question, but what I can say is that the result makes sense. If we’re totally honest, Snohomish County does not traditionally produce strong high school football teams from a statewide perspective. Lake Stevens is one of the few exceptions, having reached the state tournament five straight years and advanced to the semifinals as recently as 2015. Add in the Vikings’ perfect 10-0 record and No. 3 seed, and they make a compelling case.

In contrast, neither Snohomish nor Darrington have even been to state in years, with Darrington last advancing to state in 2013 and Snohomish last reaching state in 2007. Snohomish is also a No. 13 seed facing traditional power Bellevue in the first round, and Darrington is a 3-7 team facing an undefeated opponent in its play-in game. Indeed, credit to the 7 percent of voters who had the confidence in the Loggers to vote for them in the poll.

This week’s games see Lake Stevens host Curtis at 7 p.m. Friday, Snohomish travel to Bellevue at 7 p.m. Friday, and Darrington head to Bremerton to face Quilcene at 5 p.m. Friday. Come about 10 p.m. Friday night we’ll know which local teams’ state journeys are set to continue.

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