One win away

For the fifth time in school history and the third time in the last five years, Washington is in the State Championship football game.

This time around the 14-0 Warriors will square off with the 14-0 Marlow Outlaws at 7 p.m. Saturday night at Wantland Stadium on the campus of UCO in Edmond.

The two teams have been ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in Class 2A most all season and now will meet for all the marbles.

The games comes on the 25th anniversary of the school’s only Gold Ball, the 1996 State Champions that were crowned in Stillwater with a win over Turpin.

Warriors Head Coach Brad Beller reports the Outlaws are, “very, very disciplined.”

“They are very physical and well coached. They are very talented and do the little things right,” Beller said. “They are the most complete team we’ve played this year. Coach (Matt) Weber and his staff always put their players in the best position to succeed. And their guys are good enough to go out and make plays each and every night.”

Beller reports the Outlaws are very balanced on offense.

“They throw the ball well but their run game is very efficient so they stretch the defense. And they have great special teams,” Beller said. “They have one of the best kickers in the nation so they are complete in all three phases of the game.

The Outlaws will use some double tight end formations and some with just one tight end and operate out of the spread on offense.

They will base out of a 4-2-5 on defense.

“The key for us will be playing within ourselves,” the coach said. “We pride ourselves in taking every game like it is the championship game each and every week. We just need to maintain our focus and frankly go out and have fun and play Washington football.

“This is a fun time. The kids have worked hard. You never talk about making it to this point but we are where we want to be with a chance to play in the last game,” he said.

In the Semifinals, Marlow defeated Eufaula, 28-16 and Washington knocked off Beggs, 14-8.

The Demons corralled the Warriors’ run game, limiting them to 31 yards on 28 plays.

“It was the lowest rushing total for us in 30 years,” head coach Brad Beller said.

Lane Steele scored on an 11 yard jaunt in the first quarter.

Washington completed eight passes in 15 attempts for 171 yards and one touchdown.

Quarterback Major Cantrell hit Luke Hendrix on a 15-yard scoring strike later in the opening period.

The Warriors had their chances to hike the score to 21-0 or even 28-0 but mistakes or turnovers kept the scoring low, Beller said.

Beggs got the safety very late in the game when Luke Hendrix sealed the victory with an interception on the Warrior one yard line, getting tackled in the end zone.

The game was won by the Washington defense that played great play after play after play, the coach said.

“It was the most complete defensive performance we’ve had all year,” Beller praised. “We saw Beggs on film run the football really, really well. We knew we had to shut down their running backs.”

The duo of OSU commit CJ Brown and Red Martel are both division one prospects and in one game this season they combined for over 700 yards.

Washington held the pair to 141 total yards rushing.

“I’m very pleased about only giving up 141 yards,” Beller said. “It was just a complete defensive effort. I give credit to the staff and Coach K (Jeff Kulbeth) making sure they were very sound in what they were doing.”

Jaxon Hendrix had a key interception that stopped one of the Beggs’ threats when they were deep in Warrior territory and Luke’s was the stopper.

Layne Spaulding led the team with 15 tackles. Brett Vaughn had 14 stops, Ben Vaughn had 13 and Reese Stephens had 10 tackles.

“Layne Spaulding had a great game from his Mike linebacker position making plays from sideline to sideline,” Beller said.

“Anything that could go wrong did go wrong” for the Warriors’ offense, according to Beller.

“It was a multitude of things,” the coach said. “We started out throwing the ball extremely well and had a chance to go up 21-0 in the second quarter. We’d get inside the red zone and then make mistakes or turn the ball over. It could have been 28-0 if not for the mistakes.”

Then the tables turned.

“In the second half we couldn’t complete a pass and couldn’t run the ball,” Beller said. “We could have put it out of reach but just didn’t execute. The good thing was we were able to control the clock enough to limit their offensive plays.”