High School Football

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High School Football

Local games
Tumwater vs. Centralia – Tumwater Stadium – 7:00 PM
River Ridge vs. Washington – South Sound Stadium – 7:00 PM
Olympia vs. Stadium – Ingersoll Stadium – 7:00 PM
Rochester vs. Eatonville – Rochester HS – 7:00 PM
Tenino vs. Aberdeen – Tenino Stadium – 7:00 PM
Rainier vs. Tacoma Baptist – Rainier HS – 7:00 PM
Yelm vs. Evergreen – Yelm HS – 7:00 PM

Out of town
Shelton @ Central Kitsap – Silverdale Stadium – 5:00 PM
North Thurston @ Lincoln – Lincoln Bowl, Tacoma – 7:00 PM
Capital @ Wilson – Stadium Bowl, Tacoma – 7:00 PM
Black Hills @ Port Angeles – Civic Field, Port Angeles – 7:00 PM

Shut Up Fatty and Four Eyes is a new feature on Oly Sports where my radio partner and friend, John McGlamery, and I discuss topics in the sports world that aren’t necessarily related to Olympia sports, though this one kind of is.

Lincoln beat Mount Tahoma 91-0 last night. Yeah, that really did happen. Let’s take a look at how it happened.

Jordan Kitna, the son of Lincoln head coach and former NFL quarterback Jon Kitna, started it off with a 25 yard touchdown run. He then threw a five yard TD and a 12 yard TD to give the Abes a 21-0 lead before an interception return gave them a 28-0 lead still in the first quarter. Up 28-0, Kitna threw for one more touchdown in the first, a 20 yard pass to Jayson Williams.

Up 35-0, Kitna then threw for four touchdowns in the second quarter (of 24, 14, 26, 29 yards) and Lincoln took a punt return to the house and took a 70-0 lead into the locker room. Kitna returned for the beginning of the third quarter but was pulled early on and the backups scored 21 more points to finish things off giving the Abes their biggest win ever, 91-0.

Kitna threw for 197 yards, seven passing touchdowns and one rushing touchdown. The Abes reportedly had a short field the entire game because of Mount Tahoma’s ineptness on offense and according to the Tacoma News Tribune’s TJ Cotterill, Mount Tahoma coach Rickey Daley didn’t feel like the Abes were running up the score.

Perhaps. But the fact is, Jordan Kitna was still throwing the ball up 28-0, up 35-0, up 42-0, up 49-0, up 63-0 in the first half. They may have been screen passes and nobody from Mount Tahoma was going to stop anybody from Lincoln, that’s probably true, but they couldn’t have just handed the ball off? Why was it necessary to keep throwing the ball?

These kind of things happen in high school football. Sometimes, no matter what a coach does, the other team can’t stop them. But having seen Lincoln first hand last year obviously run up the score on Shelton, I have a hard time giving Jon Kitna the benefit of the doubt.

At Highclimbers Stadium in 2013, Lincoln absolutely dominated Shelton. It wasn’t even close. Jake Beck, the poor quarterback for Shelton, and running back Jake Henry couldn’t even make it to each other for the handoff before a Lincoln defender was all over them. Jordan Kitna and the offense had their way and did basically whatever they wanted. The only reason that the score wasn’t higher was because of big mistakes and incredibly stupid penalties by the Abes, otherwise, it could have been a 91 point win.

Up 27-0 with 51 seconds left in the first half, the Abes called a timeout to stop the clock after a second down running play by Shelton. They then forced an incompletion on third and a punt on fourth. With 39 seconds left in the half, Kitna threw a bomb on first down that barely missed his receiver. On second down, J’Maka Love took a short pass and took it 70 yards untouched to the house and Lincoln took a 34-0 lead to the half.

Kitna returned for the second half and kept running their hurry up offense and kept on throwing. Their defense kept blitzing on every play and going hard after Beck and after not rushing the punter in the first half, they brought everybody at Colton Hubble on every punt in the second half. Because of their own mistakes, they only managed seven more points, but it was pure and utter domination and Kitna did not sit until midway through the fourth quarter in a 41-6 win.

After the game, the Abes celebrated like they had won the Super Bowl and in front of the Shelton crowd, they performed a terrible version of the Haka with multiple players doing backflips across the field in the background.

After seeing that performance last year and then hearing that Kitna played late into the fourth quarter last week in a 62-0 win over the Highclimbers (a game in which he threw five touchdown passes, two in the third quarter after they had a 36-0 halftime lead), it is hard for me to listen to Coach Daley and believe that the Abes weren’t running up the score in their 91-0 win over lowly Mount Tahoma.

I want to like the Abes. I want to like all the good that Jon Kitna has done at Lincoln. But these games in which he continues to have his son throw the ball despite absolute domination and with a huge lead are undermining that likability. I am not fan.

UPDATE: Here are Jordan Kitna’s highlights from the big win. Six of his eight touchdowns, at least. Watching videos of Lincoln play this season, the one thing you can say in defense of them is that they seem to be running the same plays no matter the situation. Not sure if that really is in defense of them, but I guess you can’t fault them for playing their game for the first half, at least.