Puyallup and Ziere Ford run over Bethel for first 4A SPSL victory
Ziere Ford and the Puyallup Vikings gave the Bethel Braves an unfriendly welcome back into the South Puget Sound League on Friday night at Art Crate Field.
Ford ran wild and the Vikings ran away for a 46-18 victory over the Braves as the teams opened their long-delayed and shortened football season in the rain. Bethel played its first SPSL contest in five years after four seasons in the 3A PCL.
“We finally got to play,” Puyallup coach Greg Jeffers said. “I don’t know that it was all that pretty, but we got to play.”
Ford, the stocky 5-foot-8 junior running back, outgained Bethel by himself in the first half, accumulating 118 yards on the ground and scoring two touchdowns on 10 carries while adding a 30-yard scoring reception from quarterback Luke Holcomb. He finished with 186 yards on 21 carries, with four scores to go with the TD catch.
“I mean, I was expecting it because I had trust in my line and we’d been working on it all year,” Ford said. “In the practices we had, everybody was trying to get on the same page. Today, we had some minor mistakes. But we’ll get there.”
Bethel had 115 total offensive yards in the first half. Of those, 72 came on a five-play scoring drive late in the second quarter.
Bethel quarterback Kekoa Visperas paid off that drive with an 18-yard scramble into the front left corner of the end zone with just 35 seconds left in the first half. That cut the Vikings lead at the break to 25-6.
Puyallup had an opportunity on the final play of the half to extend the lead again, but Hayden Lovett’s 34-yard field goal attempt sailed wide left as the buzzer sounded.
Less than 2 ½ minutes earlier, Lovett had made a 37-yarder that gave the Vikings a 25-0 advantage.
Ford started the scoring on Puyallup’s second possession of the game.
Bethel turned the ball over at its own 15-yard line on its first possession, but the defense held and Puyallup came away with no points. After another quick possession from Bethel, though, the Vikings got on the board.
Holcomb hit Jordan Dwyer down the right side for 40 yards, to the Bethel 1. Ford then plunged in for the game’s first touchdown and a 7-0 lead with 7:32 to go in the first quarter.
On Bethel’s ensuing drive, faced with a fourth-and-long, the punt snap sailed over the punter’s head and out of the end zone for a Puyallup safety. On the second play after the free kick, Ford went 57 yards for another touchdown and a 16-0 Puyallup advantage with 4:47 left in the first quarter.
“Since we thought he had a dislocated thumb on Tuesday, we’re real happy with his performance today,” Jeffers said of Ford. “He held onto the ball and did a great job.”
Ford scored for the third time with just seven seconds left in the first, finding himself alone on a wheel route where Holcomb found him for a 30-yard TD reception. It was his only catch of the game.
“I think that play was so funny,” Ford said. “Because the middle linebacker was telling his guys, ‘Watch the wheel.’ The outside ‘backer went in with the slant route and I was just wide open. Nothing but grass. Just so open.”
Ford finished with those 216 total yards of offense. Meanwhile, Holcomb enjoyed his season debut by completing 10 of 17 passes for 179 yards and two scores. The second scoring pass didn’t come until the 10-minute mark of the fourth quarter, when the Vikings faked the hard run up the middle that had been working so well.
Holcomb came off the play fake, rose, and found Sermon Wilson down the left hash for 54 yards and a 46-12 lead.
No state playoffs will follow the shortened five-week season. Does that make the games less meaningful?
“We wish that was happening,” Jeffers said. “But these kids haven’t played in a year and a half. They just want to play football.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 11:37 PM.