Try ‘Legendary’ Bears Cv’s State Champions Rate With Area’s All-Time Best Teams

One of the best Spokane football teams ever played perhaps the best football game ever Saturday night.

Central Valley’s behind-the-woodshed whippin’ of South Kitsap for the State 4A football championship was the stuff of legends.

Given the magnitude of the game, the stage on which it was played and the complete domination of a respected program, the Bears’ 49-13 thrashing of the Wolves should always be used as a measuring stick whenever great teams are mentioned.

Defensively, CV slammed the door on a team averaging more than 42 points per game.

Offensively, the Bears went over, around and through a team that gave up just 12 points a game.

South K, a team whose closest of 12 games in its 18th-straight playoff season was 11 points, saw that plus-30 turned into a minus-36 by a team that had never won a playoff game before this year.

Bludgeoned comes to mind.

But to call the Bears the best team ever wouldn’t be fair to them or a handful of other teams such as Gonzaga Prep’s 1963 squad or Lewis and Clark’s of 1967, generally considered Spokane’s best.

The Bears do, however, deserve to be part of the argument.

Until 1973, there was no state playoff for a barometer. Since then, the only Spokane schools to win titles were West Valley, East Valley and Gonzaga Prep twice.

And none was quite as convincing as Central Valley’s championship game statement.

The Bears had the ball 32 minutes of the 48-minute game, including an 18-6 edge in the first half, against a team that rushed for more yards than CV in one less game. Central Valley never punted.

West Valley’s 1976 team finished 12-0 but only beat a .500 Hoquiam team 30-21 in the finals. East Valley was 13-0 in 1981 after edging Arlington 19-14.

In 1982, twice-beaten Gonzaga Prep handed South Kitsap its only loss, winning the title game “just” 25-7. In ‘86, the Bullpups went undefeated in 12 games but only beat Juanita 14-7.

Throughout this season, the Bears were never quite perfect. Their secondary was suspect, the quarterback inconsistent and there was that humbling loss to Gonzaga Prep late in the regular season.

In the playoffs, while South Kitsap opened with 42-8 and 55-9 wins, Central Valley was fighting through the Big Nine Conference’s representatives, winning by seven, three and nine points.

In the last two weeks, CV took the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the state, both nationally ranked, apart.

In the semifinals, the secondary of cornerbacks Nate McFarlane and Zac Scott and free safety Justin Folkins was superb in a 10-0 win over 12-0, top-ranked Puyallup, a team with a state-of-the-art passing attack.

Against South Kitsap, quarterback Chad Adamson made the Bears complete. A talented athlete, Adamson showed flashes of brilliance, rarely made mistakes and was always a leader but never settled into a groove, perhaps because he was never needed on a consistent basis with all the other weapons the Bears had.

When the Bears took their game to another level Saturday night, Adamson was leading the charge.

Adamson completed 13 of 17 passes for 198 yards, which played as important a role in Tyree Clowe’s rushing record as the offensive line.

Clowe ran for 254 yards on 28 carries, both championship game records, punishing the few South Kitsap defenders who weren’t buried by the line or the fullback.

Defensively, the Bears were simply solid. They allowed one drive and one well-designed, perfectly executed trick play.

And everyone was fired up by the old coach’s ploy they don’t respect us. CV’s size couldn’t be hidden, so imagine South Kitsap coaches telling their players they would have to compensate with their brains and technique. Then imagine a reporter asking the players how they were going to handle the marauding Bears.

“Big guys? It don’t matter to us,” one lineman was quoted in the Tacoma paper. “The technique in practice and all the hard work we put in should take care of itself there… . The running backs run hard all the time and we know that. They are going to do the job right and we’ll get the job done in the right form. No problem for us.”

But that wasn’t all.

“Line play is going to decide the game,” the quarterback said. “We are not as big as they are, but I think we are more disciplined and fundamental, and I think we’re better because our guys are smart guys, you don’t find a dumb guy out there.”

With a little tweaking by the coaches, the Bears were suitably inspired.

The Wolves ran for just 172 yards, the quarterback was 2 of 12 with more completions to Folkins than his teammates.

Yes, the Bears had it all and for one night, no one could have done it any better.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos (1 color)