Jacks’ Jasons To Be Feared Holdahl, Hall Best Qb, Running Back In League

If the first five weeks of the high school football season have confirmed anything among Intermountain League teams it is that preseason favorite St. Maries boasts the top running back and top quarterback.

And the Lumberjacks probably have the best offensive line and most physical defense.

Still, St. Maries, 5-0 overall through the softest part of its schedule, braces for its final three league games - contests which will easily prove to be the Lumberjacks’ most arduous.

If any of the Lumberjacks were overconfident nearing the halfway mark of the season last week, though, they aren’t now. Kellogg shocked the Lumberjacks by jumping out to a 22-0 lead last Friday, but the Lumberjacks rallied for 44 straight points to post a 44-30 win.

“We needed a swift kick in the butt, a good wakeup call,” coach Curt Carr said. “But it took a lot of character for us to come back. Not many teams are going to come back from 22 points and dominate. If we’d been playing a team with more tradition we may not have been able to come back.”

And Kellogg may not have done St. Maries’ final opponents any favors.

Quarterback Jason Holdahl and running back Jason Hall, both seniors, believe their team still must prove it’s the best in the league.

“We haven’t played anybody like Moscow or Lakeland yet,” Holdahl said.

Said Hall: “The Kellogg game was like a slap in the face. During the game I thought ‘Wow, this isn’t the team we were last week.’ We can’t go into a game thinking we’re going to beat a team or that a team is going to beat you. We’re like the hunted now. We’re not doing the hunting like the last couple of seasons.”

To that end, if St. Maries’ final opponents (Lakeland, Moscow and Bonners Ferry) hope to bag the top “game” in the closing weeks of the season, they’ll have to find a way to contain the 1-2 punch of Hall and Holdahl.

The 5-foot-10, 210-pound Hall, who runs with the power of a four-wheel vehicle, has gained 986 yards and scored 17 touchdowns, six against Kellogg. He’s just 236 yards shy of breaking the school’s single-season rushing record (1,242).

The 6-2 Holdahl has thrown for 855 yards and nine TDs, completing an impressive 65 percent of his passes (51 of 79) while throwing just two interceptions.

No wonder opponents have had difficulty defending the Lumberjacks.

Hall is the first to admit that Holdahl came into the season much more prepared than himself.

A three-year starter, Holdahl spent four weeks as a ballboy at the Seattle Seahawks’ training camp, warming up quarterbacks Rick Mirer, John Friesz and Stan Gelbaugh.

“The difference it made for him coming straight into preseason practices was obvious,” Carr said.

Hall, though, had a few pounds to shed - especially after attending a team camp at the University of Montana nearly 30 pounds over his current weight.

“We started calling him GWB (pronounced gwib) - Great White Bubba,” Carr said, laughing. “He didn’t like that.”

He’s a load to bring down. And he packs an equally formidable load as a two-way starter at middle linebacker.

An all-state linebacker last year, Hall recorded a season-high 10 tackles against Kellogg, and has intercepted three passes, two of which he’s returned for TDs. He leads the team in total involvements - solo and assisted tackles.

“He’s the best middle linebacker I’ve ever had,” Carr said.

Hall became a fixture in Carr’s lineup early during his freshman year.

“He’s our inspirational leader, he’s the gel guy,” Carr said.

Though Carr holds both Hall and Holdahl in high esteem, there are six other Lumberjacks worthy of praise, too.

“You can talk a lot about those two, but my offensive line is as good as I’ve ever had,” he said. “You have to bring it back to the line. They’re not like lines we’ve had five or 10 years ago where we sometimes had to cover up or hide somebody. We don’t have one weak guy. That’s where the brain trust is.”

Hall and Holdahl are no dummies, either. They, too, heap lots of praise on their friends in the trenches.

“Last year I got pounded a few times. This year I’ve barely been touched,” Holdahl said.

“This year I’m making my moves 5 to 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage instead of 5 yards behind or at the line of scrimmage like last year,” Hall said.

Carr thinks the 1995 Lumberjacks will prove to be better than his 1991 team, the last St. Maries team to win a league championship and advance to the state playoffs.

“We’ll know in three weeks,” he said.

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