Lincoln the first Tacoma Public School to reach state semifinals since Trufant-led Wilson in 1998
Even Marcus Trufant couldn’t believe it’s been 21 years since a Tacoma Public School reached the high school football state tournament semifinals.
Trufant, a former NFL player and a Pro Bowl corner, was a running back for the 1998 Wilson Rams, the last Tacoma Public School to reach the state semifinals, beating Snohomish, 51-21, a week before the Rams fell to Pasco in the state championship game.
Now Lincoln is the first TPS school since that loaded Wilson squad to reach the semifinals. For the Abes, it’s the first time in program history that Lincoln will play in the semifinals, squaring off against second-seeded Eastside Catholic at 1 p.m. Saturday (Nov. 30) at Sammamish High School.
“That’s crazy,” Trufant said. “I can’t really believe that. There’s a lot of talent in Tacoma.”
The talent has certainly been there as of late for Lincoln, which has reached the state tournament five consecutive seasons. But disappointing, sometimes puzzling early exits from the state tournament have been the story for the Abes.
Not this year.
“It’s not talent — I would definitely say it’s not talent this year,” said 4-star receiver and defensive back Julien Simon, who has been unstoppable so far in the postseason. “We always have talent on the east side of Tacoma. I think it’s more of a discipline thing, the mental aspect of the game of football.
“Any team has a physical aspect of football. You’re going to have some big guys, some big linemen, some fast guys. Just the mental part and taking that next step is the biggest thing we’ve emphasized.”
It starts at the top, with coach Masaki Matsumoto, who was hired from California in 2015 to take over for Jon Kitna, a Lincoln graduate and former Seattle Seahawks quarterback.
The pressure of replacing a coaching great and beloved member of the Lincoln community has weighed on Matsumoto at times.
“The first couple years, being compared to (Kitna) all the time wasn’t easy, but I tell the kids to control what they can control,” Matsumoto said. “That’s what I did. It hasn’t been an easy journey for me here, even though we’ve had a lot of success.”
Part of what Matsumoto a great coach — although he won’t pin that label on himself — is how emotionally invested he is in the whole process.
Any competitive coach takes losses hard, but Matsumoto? He takes them personally.
“We’ve had some success, but in my eyes, I felt like we’ve come up short in the past,” he said. “I’m the head coach so I’m the one that has to take all the blame for that. … I’m not the smartest guy in the world. I have to compensate for that by putting in the hours.”
Like earlier this week, when Matsumoto logged a 13-hour work day, before showing up at 4 a.m. the following day to finish the game plan.
“I always feel convicted,” he said. “I don’t think leaders do it enough, but I do take all the blame for any failure. The kids go out and win games, the head coach loses them. That’s my belief. I take every loss — or even ugly wins — really hard.”
So when Lincoln’s players show up every morning for 5:45 a.m. workouts in the middle of January, Matsumoto feels like he owes them. And when Lincoln lost early in the state tournaments, it was crushing for Matsumoto.
“In the past, I think to myself, ‘Did I fail them? Do they think they put in all this work for nothing?’” Matsumoto said.
This year, with this team, has been something of a redemption tour for Matsumoto. But more than that, it’s a win for Tacoma. For the east and south sides of Tacoma, life isn’t always easy. Just ask Lincoln kicking coach Troy Zamira, who graduated from Lincoln in 1993.
“When I graduated, this was a pretty bad part of town,” he said. “You almost got a look of sympathy any time you told anyone you went to Lincoln. Nowadays, I tell people that I chose to send my kids to Lincoln from out of district. You still get that look. But now when you get that look, you get to say, ‘No, no, it’s not what we remember.’ It’s totally different. I’m proud to send my kids here. When I was going here, I never thought I would’ve said that.”
Volunteer assistant coach James Mitchell, who grew up on the east side and graduated from Foss in 1988, is a police officer for the City of Renton. He’s familiar with some of the adversity kids from the east side deal with.
“Nowadays, there’s a lot of single-parent households,” Mitchell said.
Matsumoto half-jokes that his job is “half football coach, half therapist/social worker.”
“It’s cleaned up a lot around here, which is awesome,” he said. “But you walk down the street and will see a lot of homeless people and there’s definitely still some real poverty. I witness it every day. So really, it’s about caring for these kids. We definitely have a lot to overcome.”
And that’s what makes this year’s run so special. For the kids at Lincoln High School, it just means more.
“We take a lot of pride in it,” said quarterback Caden Filer. “We just wanted to give our community something that they can believe in. Sometimes there’s stuff going around here that is rough for a lot of people but we give them hope and that’s what we’re pushing for.”
Mitchell called it a “blessing” for the program.
“The east side has always been a proud side of the city,” Mitchell said. “Just to be able to hang their hats on these kids sticking together and doing something not just for themselves — because I’ve seen a ton of individual kids coming through Lincoln — but them doing it as a team is what’s been the greatest part of it.”
It’s why Lincoln’s players wear “253” stickers on their helmets, a nod to Tacoma’s area code.
“It definitely means more to us,” Simon said. “It’s more than just a football game. We’re playing for our community. We’re playing for Tacoma.”
And the Tacoma community has their back. Yes, even rival Wilson High’s head football coach Amad Robinson, who played quarterback on the ‘98 Rams team that reached the state championship game.
“I’m definitely rooting for them,” Robinson said. “I’m happy for them. It’s about Tacoma first. To have a Tacoma Public School do it is a tremendous feat. They have a good thing going. I think they’re going to shock the state.”
A win over Eastside Catholic would put Lincoln in the conversation of all-time great Tacoma teams, alongside that Wilson team, and others, including 1975 state champion Foss and 1979 and 1980 back-to-back state champions Mount Tahoma.
“I’m 100 percent supportive of those Abes,” Trufant said. “It’s not always about just football. There’s some great young men over there that are going to do great things in life. I’m just happy for the Lincoln kids.”
This story was originally published November 29, 2019 at 3:00 PM.
