Lyle-Klickitat-Wishram planned to start out the 2005 football season at home Friday night with a non-league game against Mabton.
It was a good plan, said Cougars Coach David Barthlow, until he learned recent field improvements, including a new press box, wouldn't be finished before Friday's 7 p.m. kickoff.
"We didn't think we'd get the press box wired and inspected in time, so we decided to go to Mabton," Barthlow noted. "But we'll still have five home games after that."
On Monday afternoon, Barthlow sat down with The Enterprise to talk about the LKW football program. Our questions, and his answers to them, follow.
How many lettermen do you have returning on each side of scrimmage, and who are the key players/returning starters among them?
We have 11 returning lettermen on both sides of the ball. The really nice thing is that we return our offensive line totally intact.
Our center is Martin Grace, a senior. Our guards are Doug Ginnett, another senior, and Beau Kitchens, a sophomore. And at tackle we have Mark Rodriguez, a senior, and Richard McConville, a junior.
We also have Brady Huffman, a sophomore, back at tight end. He saw quite a bit of playing time last year.
Our backfield is brand new but pretty athletic.
Reggie Grace, a junior, is moving into the quarterback position. He played there in a jayvee game for us last year and did a good job.
Noah La Frenz, another junior, is our fullback. This will be his first year of real significant playing time.
Hershel Gaskill, a sophomore, is our halfback. He loves to run. He was the two-mile champion at the state meet last spring.
Wingback will be a shared spot between Joe Campbell, a sophomore, and Ty Freemantle, a freshman.
Overall, it's going to be an interesting year because, as of right now, we have five kids on WIAA academic probation, so they're out for the first five weeks of school. They practice with us; they just can't play in the games yet. Three of them could be starters on offense or defense, or both.
We'll suit up 15 for the first game, which is what we did last year and hope to pick up some more kids for the next week.
But by the sixth week of the season, when we go to Toledo, we should have everybody eligible.
What's your total turnout, broken down by grade?
We had 40 sign up last spring and 25 made it to practice in the fall.
Of that 25, 10 are freshmen. They'll get their baptism by fire, just like four years ago when our four seniors were freshmen.
We also have four juniors and seven sophomores.
We have kids from all three schools participating again: four from Klickitat, three from Wishram and the rest from Lyle.
Your schedule looks to be challenging. What's your take on it?
It's not an easy schedule, but it's a pretty good schedule for us now that we don't have to play Stevenson.
Of the 10 we'll play, there are a few games we should win and a few games we could win.
A couple of the teams we picked up games with, Chief Leschi and Liberty Christian, are both in their first year of 11-man football, so we should be competitive with them.
How would you describe the offensive and defensive packages you will employ this season?
Offensively we're back to running the wing-T and defensively we'll start out in a 5-3, though eventually we're going to put in a four-man front.
With our lack of experience, we've just wanted to keep things simple and focus on one thing at a time on each side of the ball.
What are your team's strengths? Any question marks?
We're not real big but we've got some good speed. Our backfield is fast and our linemen are quick.
The kids have a high level of enthusiasm and are working hard. It's a rebuilding year but finally getting that junior high program started is going to help us down the road.
Who are your assistant coaches this year and who will be responsible for what?
Norm Hightower and James Freemantle are volunteer assistants who are new to our program. Norm has been working with the offensive line and James has been working with our defensive backs.
Chris Barthlow and Allen Ginnett are the assistant coaches on staff. Chris is in charge of the defense and Allen has been working with our linemen.
It's been a real luxury to have the extra help. It's let me spend a lot of my time working with our backfield, which is not real experienced.
We got hit real hard there by graduation. We've got some big vacancies to fill, some tough kids to replace, but the new kids are picking things up pretty quickly.
LKW will play an independent schedule this year but are you looking at joining a league at some point?
With what happened the last time we were in a league, there was just too much travel involved.
There are enough teams around for us to play that we don't need to join a league.
What in your thinking will be a successful football campaign for LKW in 2005?
As long as we're competitive, our young kids learn and gain experience, and we can keep everybody out and healthy, we'll have a successful football season.
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