Deer Park runs past Medical Lake in 51-0 GNL romp

By PAUL DELANEY

Staff Reporter

It's been a most perplexing football season for Medical Lake head football coach Rick Olsen.

And that fact might not have been more evident than last Friday's 51-0 loss at Deer Park, a game that going in he felt would be one his undermanned and youthful team could win.

Instead, the Cardinals were held to just 56 yards of total offense, shutout for the third time in their last four games.

Medical Lake remained winless in the Great Northern League (0-5) and 2-6 overall. They look to stop the slide at home Friday against Riverside at 7 p.m.

Deer Park won their first GNL game and is 3-5 on the season. They ran the ball 41 times for 223 yards and added another 96 through the air.

“We're no different (of a team) than when we score 67 points against Oroville,” Olson said. “The difference is when we block and handle the assignments and do the right thing,” the team clicks, rather than clunks like it did against the Stags.

The first three series saw the teams trade punts. The second time, however, Medical Lake kicked from deep in their own territory. Alex wolf shed numerous Cardinal tacklers for a 47-yard return for a touchdown with 5:33 to play in the first quarter.

A daring fake punt from their own 21 was snuffed by Deer Park, giving the Stags the ball at the Cardinal 21. After Brad Rumann dropped a sure touchdown catch on a first and goal from the Cardinal four, he made up for it on the very next play giving the Stags a 14-0 lead with 1:59 left in the first quarter.

Olsen looked back at that fake punt as an example of the team's failure to execute.

“We set up our fake punt and if we have one guy doing the right thing, instead of being stuffed for a 2-yard loss it goes for a touchdown,” Olsen said.

“The bottom line comes down to execution,” he said.

A bright spot for the Cardinals was Jason Hayes who was busy punting all night and pinned Deer Park on their own 1-yead line with a perfect coffin-corner kick.

However, the Stags would turn terrible field position into a 21-0 lead on Rumann's 41-yard catch that wrapped up an 11-play drive. The pass from quarterback Ryan Jorgensen was his only completion in the drive.

The Cardinals turned the ball over on an interception by Nick Pacheco and that ultimately cost Medical Lake when Jorgensen's quarterback keeper with 11 seconds to play pushed Deer Park to a 27-0 halftime advantage.

Deer Park ground out –literally – a 9-play drive with the second-half kickoff and led 34-0 as the Stags stayed on the ground for 65 yards. Brandon Leliefield took it that last yard with 6:09 left in the third.

Medical Lake's long-snapping was a nightmare all night. The evening's fourth such snap sailed over Pachecho's head. He recovered the ball on his own 2-yard line. That would force the Cardinals to once again punt from deep in their own end of the field and give the ball to the Stags in excellent field position.

A series of penalties stalled the Deer Park drive and forced them to kick a Tony Heywood field goal for a 37-0 lead with just three seconds left in the third.

Medical Lake's best chance at getting something rolling came when Ryan Musser took the ensuing kickoff and seemed to have the whole field – and good blocking – ahead of him. However what was reported to have been a teammates' call for a fair catch stopped the play at the 13.

Two plays later Pacheco fumbled and Deer Park had the ball at the Cardinal 15 and three plays after the turnover, Zack Dixon put the Stags up 44-0 on a 1-yard run with 10:05 to go.

Desperate to get points on the board, the Cardinals elected to go for it on fourth down. But Brendan Heikkila's run came up a yard short and gave the ball back to Deer Park on the 45. Seven plays later, six of those in the hands of Will Leonard, the Stags had their final points on the night with 3:49 to go.

Medical Lake had one final shot at breaking through to erase the zeros on the scoreboard. Starting from the 35-yard line as they did on six different occasions when Stag kicks sailed out of bounds, the Cards' last possession ended on the DP 45 when a Pachecho pass to Jarred Swanson was broken up.

Medical Lake looks ahead to Homecoming this Friday against Riverside, (1-4 GNL/4-4 overall) a team that Olsen described as “big and physical.” They led at Pullman 10-0 before falling 28-10. The Rams also had the lead on West Valley late, 26-25, but lost 43-26.

As the season winds toward its end, Olsen insists, “we're still a thousand times better than we were last year,” something that may be a hard for many to understand.

“In two years I think we'll really be competitive because we'll be in that up cycle because of the kids we have,” Olsen said.

“The kids that need to get better are getting better and they are all sophomores,” the coach added. “You have Ryan Musser, Brendan Hekkila, Nick Pacheco and Richard Aley. “We're exactly where I thought we'd be. I said we needed three years to go through the cycle.”

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected]