Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
They are not young anymore.
The Garfield/Palouse High School football team returns for 2017 with a group of nine juniors who played as underclassmen in 2016 on a roster of only two seniors.
One of them was four-year starter Mason Bates and the other tailback Cameron Springstead.
To replace them, the Vikings will move Daniel Orfe, a junior returning to football, to starting tailback. Ely Hawkins, last year’s bruising runner in place of the injured Springstead, will move to tight end.
Behind center, they know his name around the Southeast 1B league, Evan Weagraff, a senior three-year starter.
“I would think he’s going to be one of the best players in the league,” said Will Woltering, Gar/Pal’s fifth-year head coach.
Other returning starters include Travis Knauff, a senior fullback/linebacker; junior Caden Sanderson at tight end/linebacker; senior guard/defensive end Tanner Anderson; junior center/guard Riley Pederson, and Nathan Astin, a junior linebacker.
“I’m feeling pretty good at what we have,” said Woltering. “Overall team speed, we’re pretty athletic, we just don’t have any one kid who is going to be the fastest player on the field.”
The roster for this fall is at 25 players, a boost from recent years with the addition of four eighth-graders. The new players move up from the Garfield/Palouse Middle School team which was cancelled last week for lack of players.
This is the first year Gar/Pal will suit up eighth-graders. The deeper roster will bring back a few junior varsity games for the Vikings, one of which will be against Pomeroy – which will not field a high school varsity team this year due to lack of turnout.
The Vikings finished last season at 6-4, losing a heartbreaker to Sunnyside Christian in the final game of the year, which would have forced a tiebreaker for a playoff berth had the Vikings won. Sunnyside Christian will again be a Southeast 1B league favorite as they return much of their 2016 team which lost in the state semifinals.
Garfield/Palouse opens the new season Friday at home against Troy, Idaho, at 7 p.m.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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