Powerhouses on the field

The W’s come fast and furious at Freeman.

The Scotties (4-1 overall, 2-0 in league), last year’s State 1A runners-up, are a high school football powerhouse, reaching the playoffs the past three seasons and turning in an undefeated regular season a year ago while marching all the way to the Tacoma Dome before dropping a 29-7 decision to Royal in the state championship game.

The Scotties have not lost a Northeast A League football game since the 2003-04 season, piling up an impressive number of wins in the process.

This year, the “W”s pile up on the field, as well.

Running back Michael Wittwer and wide receiver Andrew Wilkerson, both seniors, have combined to score 11 of Freeman’s 14 touchdowns going into last night’s showdown at Colfax.

Wittwer, the starter at halfback, has scored half of his team’s touchdowns. Wilkerson, a three-year starter at wide receiver, has four touchdowns, including a 63-yard run and a 70-yard reception, and kicked a pair of field goals, including a 44-yarder against Deer Park in the season opener.

For a team that lost three standout players from a year ago, the Scotties have not missed a beat.

Freeman graduated running back Kevin Hatch, the Regional Sports Commission’s junior athlete of the year, Ray Flaherty Award-winning lineman Dan Sanders and tight end Bryan Riggs. Each was a team leader both on the field and in the locker room.

“I was good friends with all those guys,” Wilkerson said. “I watched them – how they carried themselves, what they said to the team and how they played. I think playing with them really helped prepare both me and Michael to be leaders on this team.”

“This year’s seniors all came in, and we didn’t have the experience that last year’s seniors had,” Wittwer said. “We had experience, but we didn’t have the playing time. We knew what we wanted to do but didn’t know exactly how we were going to accomplish it yet.”

Thus far, the team has accomplished those goals by playing tough, hard-nosed defense – a hallmark under former defensive coordinator Jim Wood, who became the team’s head coach this season.

“We really, really focus on defense,” Wilkerson said. “We try to make it so we bring the pain instead of the other team. I think the whole team works really hard together and knows what we have to do to get it done. We have a lot of good players at our skill positions. We don’t have just one or two players who can make plays. Last year we may have had a couple better players at certain positions, but this year I think we have a much better defense all around.

“Our corners aren’t afraid to come up and hit you. On most teams, the cornerbacks are the smallest guys on the team. Not on our team. We have some good-sized guys who will step up and hit you.”

Wittwer and Wilkerson each start at safety on a defense that already has posted two shutouts – a 10-0 victory over Class 2A Deer Park and a 33-0 blanking of Priest River.

But, the pair said, the team may well have learned more from its 22-20 loss to Class 2A Chewelah than from any other game this season.

“That was the first regular season game we’d lost since Colfax beat us my sophomore year,” Wilkerson said. “That stung. It’s one thing to lose in the Tacoma Dome. I was really proud of the way we played in that game. But losing a regular season game was something different.”

“I think we went into that game thinking that all we really needed to do was show up and we’d win,” Wittwer said. “We learned that we have to go out there and work hard for every game. And I think we’ve done that every day since then.”

The Scotties are due to break out on offense, the players insist.

“Our offense is going to really start to click soon,” Wilkerson said. “We have two good running backs in Michael and in Chris Davis, and we have our starting wide receivers back. And Andrew Dresback, our quarterback, has a cannon for an arm.

“We’ve got some young linemen, but they’ve stepped up and played pretty well. Obviously we lost Kevin Hatch, but all of our returning wide receivers and Michael Wittwer moved to halfback. I still think that with some more hard work we can be at least as good as we were last year, if not better.”

Wittwer played a big role for the Scotties last season, filling in for an injured Hatch. Starting this season has been a simple case of picking up where he left off.

“It’s hard to fill in for someone like Kevin Hatch,” Wittwer said. “I just tried to run the way I know how, and that’s what I’m doing this year.

“I love to run inside, lower my shoulder and hit people. At the same time, I love to get outside and use my speed.”