Peninsula struggles to find footing in 28-0 season-opening loss to defending 3A state champion O’Dea
The Peninsula High School football team wanted to play against some of the state’s top competition in its two-game non-league schedule this year.
The Seahawks certainly got their wish on the road against defending Class 3A state champion O’Dea on Friday night at West Seattle Stadium.
The Irish were as good as advertised: Big, physical, fast and disciplined. O’Dea controlled the game from start to finish en route to a 28-0 win over the Seahawks.
“It’s a bummer,” said Peninsula senior quarterback Burke Griffin, who completed 10 of his 16 passes for 72 yards. “It’s one we’ve been preparing for, for nine months now. We knew we had O’Dea since the end of last state. We wanted the reigning state champs. We wanted the best we can get.”
For Peninsula, this is the measuring stick. Getting it in week one shows the Seahawks exactly where they’ll need to be come playoff time.
“It’s a huge benefit to play a team like this,” said Peninsula coach Ross Filkins. “We could go out and find another opponent and maybe come away with a win, but the opportunity to grow is just definitely not there. For us, we’re looking for an uncommon experience and we’re looking to really push ourselves beyond good. We’re really striving to become great.”
O’Dea scored twice in the first quarter to take a 14-0 lead with a nine-yard run from Cameron Daniels and a 2-yard keeper from quarterback Emonte Scott.
Scott hit receiver Davyn Patu for a 20-yard score in the second quarter to extend the lead to 21-0. In total, O’Dea rushed 45 times for 306 yards, while Peninsula was held to just 25 yards on the ground on 18 attempts.
The Peninsula offense never seemed to find its footing.
“We’re just missing one thing,” Griffin said. “We know we’ve got an awesome team and a great offense and we’re completely confident in it. It’s just either missing one block and we can’t get something going, or we get something going and then shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties. ... It’s always a bummer to have a shutout. But it’s on our side of the ball, not necessarily them doing something crazy (defensively).”
Filkins said the team’s execution, particularly on offense, wasn’t up to Peninsula’s standards.
“We had missing blocks, lack of execution on assignments,” Filkins said. “For us, it’s all about execution. We have to execute at a very high level to be successful. We did not do that tonight.”
Playing the defending state champs, on the road, in a season opener would be a tall task for any team.
“They’re disciplined,” Griffin said. “They’ve got size, they’re disciplined. They’ll be the biggest team we’ll probably play all year but that’s not intimidating for us. There’s lots of big kids. They’re a disciplined team. Respect to their coaches and how they prepared. We’re better than we played tonight, for sure. We know that. We’ve got a lot of things to grow on.”
Perhaps it’s a good thing that the Seahawks won’t have much time to dwell on the loss. Peninsula welcomes Class 4A power Skyline to Roy Anderson Field next Friday night in the second and final game of the team’s daunting non-league schedule.
“We need better execution in all three phases,” Filkins said. “We had really good preparation, really good practices coming into this. Sometimes week one games — the conditioning level — kids aren’t used to the adrenaline pumping in the beginning of the game. Certainly, an opponent like that kind of takes you out of your comfort zone. Sometimes there’s an adjustment that needs to be made. We have to handle that better.”
This story was originally published August 31, 2018 at 11:48 PM.