John Blanchette : Win puts bounce in Whits’ step

The mood was light – hey, the mood is always light at the Pine Bowl, even when the stakes are high. But the sensations – elation, validation – were surprisingly subdued in the wake of another Northwest Conference championship.

The Whitworth Pirates circled around head coach John Tully not far from the south goal posts – one more red-zone stand – not to bask in Saturday’s 10-6 victory over Linfield but to celebrate the contributions of their 17 seniors, and even mine a few laughs at their expense.

Defensive coordinator Kirk Westre threw an arm around linebacker Jacob Riley, eyed his retreating hairline and allowed that, “Jake has done very well for a guy who graduated high school the same year I did.”

Nick Koller, the saltshaker-sized receiver from LaCrosse, didn’t have a catch Saturday but still had a big afternoon.

“It’s his 16th birthday,” receivers coach Jason Tobeck teased gently.

This was a moment you wish on every football team. And this will be the Pirates’ favorite snapshot: the season not yet played out but a championship won, their bond reaffirmed with both warm praise and playful humor, their emotional tanks empty in the best way – after an oddly anxious victory over not just a respected opponent, but a nemesis almost forever.

Oddly anxious. That may serve as the caption to every Whitworth game.

Here is what happened to the visiting Wildcats on Saturday – on five of their nine second-half possessions, they reached the Whitworth 19, 6, 38, 32 and 48 yard lines. And failed to score even once.

Six times in the fourth quarter alone Linfield had a chance to score the go-ahead touchdown – not with a shorter field ahead of them on each occasion though it seemed that way.

Who would have imagined coastal erosion could be such riveting theatre?

Because every time surrender seemed inevitable, the Pirates made a play. Justin Rundle got a hand on a 23-yard field-goal attempt by cannon-legged Scott Birkhofer and detoured it inches wide of the upright. Phillip Entel lunged in front of Linfield’s Josh Vierra for one of his three interceptions. Then it was Jay Tully’s turn – Whitworth would pick off five Trevor Scharer passes. Rundle came up with a sack, Entel another interception and finally dime back Derek Stottlemyer batted down Scharer’s 49th pass as time expired.

“You keep thinking it’s over and then you have to go one more time,” Westre said. “I was trying to have some fun with the kids. I kept telling them, ‘This is great – just like when we were kids in the playground.’ And that’s the kind of kids they are.”

Nothing quite summed up the general weirdness quite like Linfield’s first thrust of the second half, when the Wildcats faced fourth-and-inches at the Whitworth 19 and coach Joe Smith left Birkhofer on the sidelines when a field goal would have given them the lead. Instead, Rundle and Co. stopped Pete Cruickshank cold.

“He had nowhere to go,” Rundle said. “I’m surprised they didn’t try the field goal.”

What’s not surprising is that the Pirates have had to lean on the defense so often to keep their NWC title defense in gear. They do start nine seniors on that side of the ball – and, just as significant, saw perhaps the two best players in the program’s history, quarterback Joel Clark and tight end Michael Allan, finish up a year ago.

“I took over as defensive coordinator four years ago and most of those kids started as freshmen,” Westre recalled. “The first game we gave up 49 points to Redlands. Fortunately, we won, 52-49, but it was a growth process. Even last year, we still had Joel and Michael and all those weapons, and there wasn’t as much pressure. This year, the emphasis was going to be more on defense and special teams and running the ball – shortening the games.

“You don’t want to reduce the cohesiveness of a team by saying, ‘Oh, the defense has to do it.’ That can create animosity. That’s not what we do. You do what you’re supposed to do and then go support those other guys as well.”

Some anxiety remains: Even with this victory, the Pirates have not guaranteed themselves a return trip to the NCAA Division III playoffs. The NWC has no automatic bid for its winner, and even if Whitworth beats Puget Sound to conclude the regular season, circumstances could still conspire to keep an 8-2 championship team out of the bracket.

And you thought such nonsense was confined to the BCS. Just goes to show you that a Division I playoff wouldn’t put a stop to the yearly outrage.

But there is hardly any point in looking at the downside now.

“The neat thing about it is,” said Tully the coach, “this has really been an exhausting year, because all our games seem like they’ve been like this. But now that we’ve won the league, we’re in a position if we win next week that we’re in the playoffs again. The guys will be refreshed and the coaches will be refreshed.

“For us to go back-to-back is pretty special.”

And so the mood is light at Whitworth. Nothing odd about that.