MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Teams usually don’t want to be using words like woulda, coulda and shoulda when referencing some of the previous year’s close games.
The Mountlake Terrace football team prefers to view the jar as half full rather than half empty, though.
The Hawks were only a handful of plays away from turning what was a disappointing 4-5 season into what could have been a breakthrough 7-2 record. Three of Mountlake Terrace’s five losses were by a touchdown or less.
So despite coming off yet another sub-.500 season, Mountlake Terrace heads into 2003 feeling upbeat and eager to learn from the past.
Senior linebacker Preston Doheney is encouraged by the improvement of the Hawks in the four years since Alex Barashkoff took over as head coach.
“My freshman year we were like 1-7 and then we went 3-6 and then we went 4-5,” Doheney said. “We’re progressing. I’ve just had dreams about (a winning season) since I was a little kid and going to the playoffs. I’m not going to stop until we get there.”
Doheney’s sense of urgency is shared by returning first-team, all-league quarterback Brian Ellersick, who like everyone on the Mountlake Terrace roster has never experienced a winning season at the high school level.
That could change this year, especially in light of the extra work many of the players put in during the offseason.
“I’m really confident about this year,” Ellersick said. “This year with this team, we have the biggest potential to be a playoff threat … we have the most well-rounded team. Our linemen, it seems that they were working the hardest in the weight room and in the offseason.”
Doheney noticed a far different attitude among the players in the offseason. The numbers were up in the weight room and players had a desire to do even more conditioning, such as running sprints.
“We definitely are soaring from last year … because we saw what we could have been,” Doheney said. “We said, ‘What have we not been doing?’ We took all that into consideration … we had to be a bigger and better team for next year.”
With Ellersick back, there is little doubt Mountlake Terrace offense will be able to put points on the board. The unknown is if the defense will be able to perform its job as well. It did not last year.
“We have a much quicker defense,” Barashkoff said. “They’re stronger and they’re in better shape. They may not be as big, but they’ve really got to hold us together. I said that last year and that’s why we ended up losing some close ones.
“We were 4-5. We very easily could have been 7-2, but in the big games we needed the defense to step up and this year we hope to do that.”
Barashkoff doesn’t have as many worries with the offense, even though Ellersick will be throwing to a largely new receiving corps.
Ellersick’s preferred receiver from a year ago, Brian Hoffman, is gone. Senior Ryan Marker and junior Adrian Blake have emerged as Ellersick’s new favorite targets.
By the time the regular season rolls around, Barashkoff is confident he’ll have at least two skill and two possession-type receivers.
“We’ll learn how to use what we have to be effective,” he said.
Because of the newcomers on offense, Barashkoff and his staff have tried to simplify the way they’ve run practices this season. The emphasis has been on drills and repetition.
Last season, the Hawks had worked on nine different running plays during the first week of practices. This year, they’ve worked on only four.
“We’ve made sure that we’re running the four plays pretty solid and then as we get going through the season, we’ll add a little bit more,” Barashkoff said. “We’re definitely working harder on the smaller things.”
Senior Chris Neal is a likely starter at running back and brings good speed to the backfield.
“We’re definitely going to throw the football,” Barashkoff said. “We just need to balance more running … if he (Neal) can produce for us and our line will run block, then it’s going to make it really hard on teams to decide what to stop.”
But the Hawks’ fortunes on offense will rise and fall with Ellersick, who threw for 2,214 yards last season and who likely will hold virtually every Mountlake Terrace passing record by the time he wraps up his football career.
“We want the ball. We want to be on offense,” Doheney said. “We want to get him (Ellersick) the ball. We want to get him passing. We want to put up points, so that it devastates the other teams.”
The talent level among the Hawks’ starters is solid, Barashkoff said, but he admitted that there is a lack of depth on the bench.
Staying injury-free will be a key to Mountlake Terrace’s success because the reserves are largely untested.
“We need to stay healthy. There’s no question about it,” Barashkoff said. “We’re not deep in any position. We’ve got some young backups and that’s the truth. We have no depth in any position.”
The mental makeup of the Hawks also appears to be far stronger than in years past. After a strong start last season, the Hawks couldn’t seem to recover when they encountered adversity.
Mountlake Terrace won three of its first four games but then struggled the rest of the way, winning only one of its final five games.
Barashkoff thinks his team will be far more resilient this year.
“The kids are confident … if we do suffer a loss, I think they are much more in tune (on how) to adjust to a loss, whereas last year we lost two in a row and they lost their confidence,” Barashkoff said. “Once we lost the confidence, it cost us a few games that were close that we could have very easily won.
“So that’s the big hurdle. We’re getting there.”
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