3 takeaways: Spanaway Lake outlasts Lakes, winning 32-21 to claim 3A PCL’s No. 2 seed
The Spanaway Lake High School football team beat Lakes on Friday night at Art Crate Field, 32-21, taking the runner-up spot in the 3A Pierce County League behind league champion Lincoln. Here’s what we learned from the Sentinels’ win.
COACHES FELT JOSHUA COLLIE WAS DUE FOR A BREAKOUT. HE DELIVERED
Spanaway Lake coach Cameron Robak said the Sentinels’ staff was giving 5-foot-10, 190-pound running back Joshua Collie a hard time for going down on first contact in the team’s last game.
Collie must have taken that message to heart. He ripped off an 87-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter — shedding multiple tackle attempts along the way — to give Spanaway Lake a 32-21 lead, which ultimately put the game out of reach.
“I saw a little space and I just took it,” Collie said. “I broke a couple tackles, they wasn’t wrapping so I just took it off. I saw the space and I took it.”
Collie finished the night with 16 carries for 226 yards and three touchdowns in the win. He suffered a sprained ankle during his freshman season in the shortened spring season. He’s been anxious to show what he can do this fall. Robak said he felt Collie was due for a big game.
“I told him this is his coming out party,” Robak said. “I said that everyone is going to know about him after this game. We’ve been waiting to let him loose. He’s had a couple games where he’s been beat up a little bit. I knew tonight he was going to go wild. That was the plan.”
Spanaway Lake has good team speed across the board, but Collie seems to jump out even more. He just has an extra gear.
“He’s fast, he’s got some great legs, some strong legs,” Robak said. “He just runs hard, he’s just gotta get more confidence in our scheme. He’s only a sophomore, he was out most of the year injured. So I think he’s just going to keep on rolling these next two years and hopefully deep into this playoff run.”
THAT WAS JUST SPANAWAY LAKE’S FIFTH GAME OF THE SEASON
Last spring was supposed to be the covid shortened season. But Spanaway Lake managed to play six games last spring. This fall? Friday night’s win was just the team’s fifth game of the season.
Spanaway Lake missed its first two weeks because it was in covid protocol and didn’t kick off the season until Sept. 17. Other teams’ covid issues along the way caused the cancellation of two other games. It’s been frustrating, Robak admitted.
“We had more games last year in the spring season than we did last year,” he said. “We’ve had a ton of film time, just trying to bring competition at practice. Because these guys want to compete. You don’t want to sit around and practice for two weeks for somebody. It gets boring. So just trying to spice things up at practice.”
Jasiah Wagoner, considered a four-star recruit at corner, said the team is just trying to stay positive through the ups and downs.
“We just have to roll with the punches, that’s all we’ve been doing all season,” Wagoner said.
Wagoner caught six passes for 78 yards and a touchdown in the win. Defensively, he hauled in a key interception.
LAKES HAS SOME THINGS TO CLEAN UP
Lakes had four turnovers in the loss, two interceptions and two fumbles. But perhaps more alarming were the 13 penalties for 105 yards.
“Extremely disappointed in our focus, extremely disappointed in our approach,” said Lakes coach Dave Miller. “I don’t know if we had a letdown after last week’s big game. But just so inconsistent, poor tackling, missed blocks, penalties, dropped passes.”
The sloppiness was puzzling after Lakes looked really good in a narrow loss to league champion Lincoln last week.
“All self-inflicted,” Miller said. “Just silly, goofy stuff that we don’t coach. I don’t know if guys were not focused, if guys were thinking they were just gonna freelance on their own. I don’t know. We had a lot of guys out of position and that’s frustrating.
“Let’s be honest, we still played a hell of a football game against a good team. It’s not like they’re not a good team. We’ve just gotta clean it up. We haven’t had more than three penalties in a game. So I don’t know why this happened. We’re still a really good football team.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2021 at 12:27 AM.
