EDMONDS — The Edmonds-Woodway football team entered uncharted territory during last week’s key showdown with Kamiak.
The Warriors had outscored their opponents 212-74 and had never trailed once in their first five games this season.
But against a tough Knights’ defense, the high-powered Edmonds-Woodway offense struggled to a 3-0 halftime lead and then fell behind 7-3 late in the third quarter.
“You don’t know, until you play a great team like that, how you are going to respond,” Edmonds-Woodway head coach John Gradwohl said.
The Warriors answered the call with 21 straight points to keep their unbeaten record intact with a 24-7 victory over the Knights in a Western Conference South Division game Oct. 6 at Edmonds Stadium.
Edmonds-Woodway (6-0 in the league, 6-0 overall) plans to tuck away the memory of the hard-fought victory for possible future use.
“When you come from behind and face that adversity … you know if you get down we have the will power and fortitude to come back and score and play some good defense,” senior co-captain Casey Hamlett said. “That’s just a great confidence boost. Later down the road when we start to play better and better teams in the playoffs, we’ll get in that situation again. We know that we can come back from that now.”
The Warriors definitely were a little surprised to be only up by three points at halftime and then to find themselves trailing the Knights (4-1, 5-1).
“That’s something new for us, for them to come in here and then take a lead on us,” senior running back Josh Heard said. “That really kind of set us back a little bit. But then we came back on the next drive and broke out of it for a touchdown.”
The two teams traded punts to start the second half before Kamiak put together a nine-play, 46-yard scoring drive culminating in a 2-yard run by running back Bryson Kelly at the 3:25 mark of the third quarter.
Kamiak’s 7-3 lead didn’t last long as Edmonds-Woodway responded with a 9-yard touchdown run by junior quarterback Kyle McCartney with 52 seconds remaining in the quarter. The big play on the six-play, 79-yard drive was a 49-yard pass from McCartney to running back Tony Heard. McCartney completed 14 of 21 passes for 166 yards with one interception. He also rushed for 35 yards on six carries.
Edmonds-Woodway increased its advantage to 17-7 on a 5-yard touchdown run by Josh Heard midway through the fourth quarter.
Senior Eric Greenwood then recovered a Kamiak fumble on the ensuing kickoff. The Warriors moved the ball down to the Kamiak 13 but then Josh Heard was stopped short of a first down on a fourth-and-one and Edmonds-Woodway turned the ball over on downs.
Two plays later, Edmonds-Woodway’s Jordan Scott intercepted a pass and returned it 21 yards for a touchdown to close out the scoring.
Despite a tough first half, Josh Heard finished with 101 yards on 21 carries. Tony Heard had seven carries for 38 yards and caught four passes for 84 yards.
“When they (Josh and Tony Heard) were able to do what they can do, then they excelled,” Gradwohl said. “In the first half, they never got going. I needed to figure how I could get them loose.”
Edmonds-Woodway took a 3-0 lead on a 31-yard field goal by Curtis Storer with 4:58 remaining in first quarter. The 16-play drive consumed nearly seven minutes.
In the second quarter, the Warriors drove down to the Knights’ 6, but McCartney was picked off by Kamiak’s Marcel Seeley.
“I still think this game could have gone either way in a lot of ways,” Gradwohl said. “We’re going to learn so much from this. Kamiak did a great job of game planning. This is going to be a great tool for us to learn from and get better.
“The last two weeks have gotten a little too easy for us maybe. Their defense stepped up and really challenged us.”
The Edmonds-Woodway ground game started to roll in the second half as the Kamiak defense seemed to tire.
“Our linemen did a real good job of picking up their blitzes,” Josh Heard said. “I give a lot of credit to our linemen for blocking in the second half.”
Hamlett had a feeling it was only going to be a matter of time before the offense would start to gain the advantage.
“We just came out and played hard,” Hamlett said. “We just had to regroup. We went over our offense the whole halftime and figured out things that would work.”
While the offense came alive in the second half, the Edmonds-Woodway defense came up with what Hamlett said was the team’s best defensive performance of the year.
The goal was to play team defense, Gradwohl said.
“They’ve got some good backs. They’re not just one guy,” he said. “I really just wanted the defense to swarm the ball. … I thought the great thing about our defense is the longer they played the better they got. That’s what you hope for.”
Kamiak came into Friday’s game averaging 38 points per game.
“We stepped up hard and shut them down and got a couple of turnovers,” Hamlett said. “That’s what you need to win games.”
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