By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
PORT ORCHARD – For a brief moment Friday night at Joe Knowles Stadium it looked like South Kitsap was ready for a comeback against non-league opponent Newport. Then in 12 seconds that all changed.
The Wolves had just closed their deficit to 21-14 on a five-yard pass that was tipped and then caught for a touchdown by Joshua Franklin just into the third quarter. South had driven 68 yards in 9 plays, thanks to the running of fullback Marshaud DeWalt and two penalties on the visiting Knights.
But then the Wolves kicked off and Newport’s Tyren Sams returned it 75 yards untouched up the middle to put a dagger into the hearts of the Wolves en route to a 35-14 Knights’ victory.
“We did a very poor job of covering,” said South Kitsap coach Eric Canton. “Very poor. There was a huge hole, it looked like hash mark to hash mark. It was like nobody was in the middle of the field.”
Newport then tacked on a final score late in the fourth quarter. The Knights went 77 yards in just four plays. Paul Wells started it with a 24-yard romp that was sliced by 10 yards on a holding penalty. Then the Knights got lucky and recovered their own fumble for a four-yard gain.
Nkumbu Chisebuka, who waltzed for 168 yards and scored the Knights first TD on a 45-yard run, motored for a 51-yard run around left end to put the Knights on the Wolves’ eight-yard line. Wells scored on the next play to move the Knights to 2-0 on the season (they beat Capital 35-7 last week).
Early on it didn’t look good for the Wolves, who last week opened their season with a 40-0 pounding of Kentridge. The Knights were manhandling the Wolves up front, opening huge holes for their wishbone attack.
The Knights clearly dominated the first half in which they took a 21-7 lead into halftime. They rushed for 267 yards to just 15 for the Wolves. That changed a little bit in the second half when the Wolves began running DeWalt more. The 5-foot-5, 234-pound DeWalt gained 47 yards on nine tough carries, most of that coming in the second half.
“We just got our fannies handed to us,” said Canton. “That is a physical, physical football team that just … here we come, stop us. And we couldn’t do it.”
Newport finished with 405 yards, all on the ground. So the Wolves did slow them down some the second half, but still it wasn’t pretty for the homeboys.
Canton said they didn’t make any defensive adjustments for the second half.
“We just said, hey, you are in the right spots, you just got to make a play,” Canton said. “It comes down to execution. They executed and we didn’t.
“The one thing I have said is we are very, very young, very inexperienced and hopefully now we will have gained some experience. We got good experience last week from playing ahead, and I think we got some good experience this week as well.
“Nothing we can do about this except learn.”
The Knights run the wishbone offense almost to perfection. Their big offensive line fires out and knocks down anybody in their way and their varied attack from the ‘bone makes it difficult to pick up who has the ball.
That makes their offense almost a magic trick – now you see the ball now you don’t.
‘I think the only guys that didn’t see their counter plays were our guys on the field, for some reason,” Canton said.
South junior running back-linebacker Ramon Marin had a good game. He was knocking down runners and creating havoc with his fierce determination and aggression. But he and his teammates were up against a tough foe.
“They are tough, good team,” Marin said. “They handed it to us pretty good. They are a very physical team. They know how to block. They are just consistent with everything they do. We weren’t doing those counter plays right. We had the read, but we just couldn’t get together. But we will learn from that.”
The Wolves are at Gig Harbor next Friday, and that is not any gimme by any means.
“I think everybody is going to be tough,” Canton said. “We can’t take anybody for granted. We proved it right here. We can go out and beat somebody by 40 and then … the score didn’t indicate how much they handled us. We were fortunate to be hanging in there when we were.”
Marin added, “We just got to get it together. We will just come back stronger the next time.”
Newport 7 14 7 7 – 35
South Kitsap 7 0 7 0 – 14
Scoring
First Quarter
SK – Marcus Burk 6 pass from Cooper Canton (Bryson Boyer kick)
N – Nkumbu Chisebuka 45 run (Chido Chang kick).
Second Quarter
N – Paul Wells 27 run (Chang kick)
N – Jordan Sanberg 1 run (Chang kick)
Third Quarter
SK – Joshua Franklin 5 pass from Cooper Canton (Boyer kick)
N – Tyren Sams 75 kickoff return (Chang kick)
Fourth Quarter
N – Wells 8 run (Chang kick)
Leading Individual Statistics
Rushing – N: Chisebuka 13-168; Wells 8-86; Conner Baumann 9-62; David Kim 4-37; Brian Setijono 5-28; Sanberg 7-24. SK: Marshaud DeWalt 9-47; Terro Bell 9-23; Corey Bell 4-12.
Passing – N: Sanberg 1-0-0-0; Matt White 1-0-0-0. SK: Canton 13-5-1-88.
Receiving – N: None. SK: Burke 2023; Logan Knowles 2-43; Ramon Marin 1-7; Franklin 1-5.
