LAKEWOOD — Despite their 5-1 start to the season entering Week 7, the Timberline Blazers were required to take what some coaches call a trip to the doctor’s office to take their medicine every week.
Each weekend, win or loss, the Blazers had at least one nagging problem arise during the game that required treatment in practice to start the following week.
Turnovers. Personal fouls and other untimely penalties. A struggling pass offense.
Not to mention a heaping amount of injuries, but the Blazers’ frustrations have been more related to the controllables on the field.
In Timberline’s crucial Puget Sound League Nisqually Division matchup against Lakes on Friday, Oct. 16, the Blazers healed from their penalty woes, but just about every other recurring ailment caught up to them.
None more impairing than the dastardly turnover bug.
The Blazers turned the football over four times, and the Lancers made them pay by scoring off of all four in a 49-12 rout at Harry E. Lang Stadium. On each of the first three Timberline giveaways, Lakes scored a touchdown on the very next snap.
“Turnovers are always bad. It’s a little emotional kick in the stomach,” Timberline head coach James Jones said. “You have to be a six-second competitor. When things go bad, you’ve gotta flush it and play the next play. That’s the thing we have to know.”
Timberline hadn’t allowed more than 31 points to an opponent this season and had only allowed more than 20 points once before Friday night. But Lakes’ speed on offense was far different than anything the Blazers had encountered.
On the Lancers’ opening possession, however, Timberline senior Troy Fatilua made a key pass breakup down the field to force a punt. The Blazers ceded their chance to make an early statement on offense by going three-and-out and punting from their own 1-yard line.
Lakes took over at the Timberline 30 and immediately jumped in front with a 30-yard rushing touchdown by Korben Reed. After another Blazers punt, Lakes sophomore quarterback Elijah Gafa-Shields connected with Kameron Warren for a 47-yard toss before Toetu Moliga capped off the drive with a 1-yard plunge.
Down 14-0 through one, Timberline junior quarterback Cam Vongdara coughed up the ball on a sack deep in Blazers territory, and Moliga added a touchdown run on a second consecutive carry to give the Lancers a 21-0 advantage just 57 seconds into the second quarter.
Lakes got the ball back in Timberline territory once again following a fourth-down stop, and Gafa-Shields pulled off some sorcery to escape a sack and find a wide-open Reed in the back of the end zone for a 25-yard score.
Timberline finally assembled its first touchdown drive, and senior running back Cooper Jones, who battled injuries early in the season, looked like his old self with a powerful 3-yard touchdown run through most of the Lakes defense.
Any momentum the Blazers believed they created by cutting the margin to 22 with three minutes left in the first half was quickly charred by the Lancers. Ean Owens beat Timberline’s secondary for a 39-yard touchdown catch from Gafa-Shields, and Vongdara threw an interception to set up Gafa-Shields’ third touchdown pass of the first half on a 13-yarder to Zarrick Roberts on the very next snap.
Timberline faced by far its biggest deficit of the season at halftime, staring down a 42-6 hole.
“I told them that we have to get ourselves ready for the next two to three weeks, so let’s go out there and play harder,” Jones said. “Make some good decisions so that we can get ourselves in the right mindspace for the next few weeks.”
The Blazers leaned on star running back King Pridgen to start the third quarter and moved into the red zone, but Pridgen fumbled just outside the Lakes 20-yard line. On the very next snap, Warren sprinted and juked past the whole defense on a jet sweep for a 78-yard dagger midway through the third quarter. The Lancers’ 49-6 lead was enough to start the running clock.
Cooper Jones tacked on his second touchdown run of the night with a 31-yard score in the fourth quarter, capping off his best game of the season with 80 yards on 10 carries. He complimented Pridgen’s 99 yards on 23 carries. Timberline outrushed Lakes 207-202, but the Blazers’ turnovers and short field positions for the Lancers played a part in the deflation of those numbers.
Above all, James Jones summed up the biggest difference between Lakes and Timberline on Friday night in one sentence.
“They’re fast,” he said. “With all of our injuries on the back end and them being that fast, we just didn’t have anybody to cover that speed. We didn’t do a great job of finishing some plays where we had them bottled up. We can’t turn the ball over. They beat us up, and they ran over us and around us.”
Timberline (5-2, 2-2 Puget Sound League) will host Capital (3-4, 2-2 PSL) in a key matchup on Friday, Oct. 23 that will decide who gets the third seed in the Nisqually Division versus the fourth. Both teams will get a crossover in Week 9, and next week’s Lincoln-Silas matchup will determine who each of those teams play, as the two Narrows teams are also 2-2 in league play and taking up the third and fourth spots.
Everything the Blazers set out to accomplish is still in front of them, but they might need some stronger medicine from the doctor to get there.
“We’ve just got to come out and play hard from the beginning. We had some snafus,” Jones said. “They were just fast, and it took our kids a moment to catch up to the speed.”
