Columbia High’s young football team will have one more chance this season to earn a win, when Fort Vancouver comes to White Salmon on Friday in a Trico League game.
The 7 p.m. kickoff will be the final one for four Bruin seniors. Columbia (0-7 overall, 0-4 Trico League) last played Oct. 14, as a power outage threatened and eventually caused the cancellation of the Bruins’ scheduled matchup last week against La Center. (Power woes caused the nearby contest in Lyle — vs. Dufur — to be stopped in the third quarter and finished Saturday morning.)
Columbia Coach Dan Smith said his Bruins match up well against Fort (2-6 overall, 1-3 Trico). The Trappers’ lone league win was, 29-27, to Stevenson on Sept. 16. The victory was the school’s first in football since 2019.
“That’s a team that we’ve kind of circled; we know that we can compete with them,” Smith said. “Staying healthy (this past week) was a good thing and being able to come out full speed against (Fort) this Friday will be a big deal for us.
“We just have to continue to get better each week and keep working to improve in each of our positions.”
Smith said his team, to have success, has to establish its running game against Fort. “We’ve had spurts of that. And I think now, with the changes that we’ve made throwing the ball, if we can establish the run, if we can just get some consistent three and four yards on first down — so they have to respect that — that’s going to open up some of our short passing lanes.
“Hopefully that will kind of get our full offense together. I thought we kind of turned the corner a little bit against Seton Catholic. (That was) probably our best offensive output this year. And then the next week against King’s Way our defense played really well for two and a half quarters, but we just couldn’t quite get that offense going. This is a week for us to get that going so our defenses can stay off the field (longer).”
The Bruins scored a season-high 21 points against Seton and Columbia trailed King’s Way 6-0 in the third period before the Knights scored 19 unanswered points en route to a 32-7 win.
Running back Wesley White is a tough inside runner, who can get those three- and four-yard first down gains Smith spoke of to loosen up opposing defense.
“Wes is a pretty hard runner … it’s worked out well,” Smith said of when the Bruins moved White into the backfield and inserted sophomore Wyatt Stelma at quarterback. Smith knew it would take some time for his young quarterback to develop.
“We don’t have a whole explosive group of playmakers around him right now, but he’s making good decisions,” Smith said. “We’re into week 4 (with Stelma at quarterback) … of kind of making that change and he’s proceeded kind of like I anticipated he would. So, it’s just getting those reps, getting him comfortable.”
Defensively, the Bruins must deal with quarterback Kaeleb Cvitkovich and receiver Even Mendez. The two connected on the Trappers’ game-winning TD in the come-from-behind win against Stevenson. Fort also has a 23-22 win over Foss High this season.
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