Season preview: Peninsula football returns in loaded 4A SPSL

Throughout COVID-19 protocols, multiple postponements, and a temporary reclassification to the 4A South Puget Sound League, Peninsula Seahawks football has finally returned.

It’s a shorter, abbreviated season that lacks the opportunity to qualify for a state tournament -- a place Peninsula had marked on their 2020 calendar -- but, in the end, the Seahawks can finally take the field.

“We’re super excited,” Peninsula senior Bryce Cleave said. “We’re clicking on all cylinders. We’re just happy to be back out here, honestly.”

And in a year unlike any other is a Peninsula team unlike any other, one that coach Ross Filkins says might be his best ever.

“I’ve been coaching for twenty-five years, and we’ve had some really strong teams… but this might be our strongest team,” Filkins said of his student-athletes back in November. “I feel comfortable (saying) that we’ll have ten or twelve seniors playing college football next year.”

Of those seniors are Sean Skladany, last year’s South Sound Conference MVP. Camron Watkins, Peninsula’s kicker, is nationally ranked after attending a handful of camps last summer. And the two-way Landon Sims, who looks to excel for the Seahawks as both a running back and linebacker, may benefit from his senior year the most, after three major injuries created an immense setback during his junior campaign.

It’s a list of names on the Peninsula roster that only continues, one that warrants a description of “stacked,” in Skladany’s words.

Peninsula’s first task in the 4A SPSL? Take down Gig Harbor for a fifth straight year in the annual Fish Bowl game, a community-wide event that typically would host thousands of people.

“We’re so thankful that the season actually happened and that we do get the chance to have a senior Fish Bowl, because that’s definitely the highlight of the year, every year,” Sims said. “Playing some familiar faces, with a huge crowd of family and friends that you know, it’s definitely a great time to be out there under the lights, just going at it with your friends. … It’ll be a little different without the fans, but we’re grateful to have anything at all.”

As will be the case with the rest of Peninsula’s schedule, fans are prohibited from attending high school athletics this year, stemming from safety protocols related to the coronavirus. It’s just one of many measures the WIAA enforced in order to keep players and coaches safe.

Throughout the fall, when Peninsula’s out-of-season coaching period was in full effect, practices required masks and social distancing while pads, equipment, and any form of contact was prohibited.

Today, Peninsula’s gatherings actually resemble that of a football practice.

“It’s been going really well, but it is different,” Filkins said. “We didn’t get our normal spring and summer camps, but we’re picking up and we’re improving every day. … It feels a lot more like real football. We’re still very spread out. We’re doing a really good job (with) what we learned during the small-pod workouts, and now that we’re in Phase Two, it just feels like there’s so much more flexibility.”

The advancement into Phase Two of the Governor’s “Roadmap to Recovery” was actually what permitted football to resume in the Puget Sound region, which banked on a decrease in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and ICU occupancies. Peninsula’s tightly knit team adhered well to coronavirus-related protocols throughout the fall -- as they are now -- but Sims says it was a struggle for such a close group to remain so separated.

“We’re obviously a very close-knit team,” Sims said. “Everybody knows everyone. We’re always super close, conversing all the time. But with COVID-19, we have to be always spread (out). We take it really seriously, and have masks on 100 percent of the time… distancing on the sidelines, distancing as much as possible on the field. … It’s definitely a different feel, not being able to go up and hug your guys and congratulate them. That’s definitely been the biggest struggle this year.”

Yet in a year many feared would lack the completion of a high school athletic season due to the coronavirus, Filkins has continued on with his mantra that his entire roster has bought into: win one game a week.

“Filkins has done a great job on providing us with the same mindset to win one game every week, and focus on the week that is at (hand),” Cleave said. “We’re preparing the same way that we would any other season.”

If there’s one thing that Sims wants his fellow seniors to accomplish in their final months as Peninsula Seahawks, it’s to leave it all on the field.

“I just want to make sure that all of my guys, all of my seniors and underclassmen… they leave everything out there,” Sims said. “That’s one thing I want to accomplish. Because nothing’s guaranteed, especially in this year. Injuries, COVID-19, anything. Every chance we get out there, I want our guys to give 100 percent.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 11:15 AM.