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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend September 13, 2005 Surprise! Look which SOC teams are unbeaten Prep Notebook By DON HUNT Mail Tribune Two weeks into the high school football season, who would have thought the only unbeaten teams in the Southern Oregon Conference would be Eagle Point and Ashland? Granted, the Eagles and the Grizzlies, who were picked to finish fifth and seventh, respectively, in an SOC preseason coaches poll, thus far have played soft schedules. It’s still a guessing game trying to separate the contenders from the pretenders. But I’ve got a feeling both Eagle Point and Ashland will finish the season with winning records and I’m convinced the Eagles are a legitimate state-playoff contender if they can stay healthy. One year after soaring to a 7-2 record but missing the playoffs on a lost coin flip, the Eagle Point has romped to wins of 41-21 over South Salem and 53-20 over Madison. Most SOC insiders thought that EP’s offense would go through growing pains after losing quarterback Jared McClellan — last year’s SOC offensive player of the year — to graduation. The Eagles suffered another setback when their top receiver, A.J. Nichols, transferred to North Medford. Advertisement But thanks to the superb efforts of junior quarterback Brandt Nevin and senior tailback Kris Butler, they’ve hardly missed a beat. The 6-foot-1, 160-pound Nevin has been almost perfect. He’s completed 19 of 22 passes for 290 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions in the Eagles’ two games. He’s also rushed for 73 yards and two more scores in coach Harry Hedrick’s option attack. "McClellan got off to a similar start last season but I don’t think I’ve ever had a quarterback go 19-for- 22 in his first two games," says Hedrick, who coached former University of Oregon and current Miami Dolphins quarterback A.J. Feeley at Ontario High in the mid-1990s. "We don’t throw the ball that well in practice against air. "The amazing thing is, two of his three incompletions were dropped. Last week, he made a perfect throw that bounced off a kid’s facemask. It should have been a touchdown from about 40 yards out." Nevin had spent two years running Hedrick’s system at the freshman and JV levels, but he hardly took a snap and didn’t throw a pass on varsity until this season. "He’s a pretty slender kid who doesn’t yet have a real strong arm, but he throws the ball accurately and with good timing," says Hedrick, whose team leads the SOC in total offense (438 yards per game) and scoring (47.0). "And he makes good decisions running the option." Nevin has been helped enormously by a stout line and a strong running game fueled by Butler, the SOC’s leading rusher through two games with 241 yards and five touchdowns. Butler, who is averaging 8.3 yards per carry, also ran back a punt 50 yards for a touchdown in the win over Madison. A sprinter in track, Butler might be the fastest player in the SOC. The Eagles also boast a speedy and physical defense, led by linemen Chris Cox and Tyler Cam and linebackers D.J. Hill, Tyler Chase and Shane Bei, a transfer from the Sacramento area. "We thought our defense would be the strength of the team because that’s where we have the most experience," Hedrick says. "But the offense has kept pace. We’re much further along offensively at this point in the season than I thought we’d be." The Eagles host Lebanon Friday, then travel to SOC favorite Roseburg on Sept. 23 in what’s shaping up to be a head- knocker. Ashland, meanwhile, is off to a 2-0 start under first-year head coach Charlie Hall. Like Eagle Point, the Grizzlies have yet to play a truly good opponent, but they’re better organized and more fundamentally sound than they’ve been since Jim Nagel retired following the 2002 season. And Hall, who coached under Nagel from 1998-2000 before taking a job as the offensive coordinator at Northern Arizona University, has some of Nagel’s magic when it comes to offensive ingenuity. That was evident during the Grizzlies’ 29-25 comeback win over Rex Putnam last Friday when they drove for the winning touchdown midway through the fourth quarter. The Grizzlies have gone back to their three-wide receiver, single-back sets that were so entertaining and effective during the Nagel era, when they reached the state playoffs 16 straight years and won three state titles. Make no mistake, though. This is Hall’s team. He used some of his own tricks — the Grizzlies twice recovered onside kicks, for example — in the win over Putnam. "We still need to get a lot better in a lot of areas," Hall says, "but it’s encouraging what we’ve done so far." Hall was especially tickled at the way the Grizzlies fought from behind last week. "It’s easy to be a front-runner when things are going well, but you wonder what kind of character your team has when it faces adversity," Hall says. "And last Friday, we answered the bell." Two areas the Grizzlies have markedly improved on since last season are running the ball and stopping the run. After taking the lead against Putnam midway through the final period, they got the ball back and melted the clock with seven straight running plays. On the other side of the ball, Ashland yielded just 57 rushing yards on 26 attempts against Putnam and, the previous week against North Salem, just 51 yards on 29 attempts. "You’re not going to win a lot of games if you can’t stop the run," Hall says. "We’ve put a big emphasis on that in practice." Of course, it’s one thing to stop Putnam and North Salem, quite another to put the vice grips on teams like Roseburg and the two Medford schools. "We’re using different schemes, different blitz packages and a little bit of smoke and mirrors," Hall says. "We’re not as big as other teams and so we’ve got to create deception. "But to a large extent, good defense still comes down to good technique, understanding leverage and angles and flying to the football." With Crater also improved — the Comets upset Marshfield in their season-opener before losing to eighth-ranked Lincoln last Friday — the SOC holds ample intrigue this fall. CRATER HIGH cross country coach Justin Loftus usually tells his athletes to run on the conservative side this early in the season. He doesn’t want them expending all their energy in September, when the big meets — district and state — don’t come around until November. But Loftus unleashed Isaac Stoutenburgh for a record-breaking attempt at last Saturday’s Yreka, Calif., Invitational. Stoutenburgh covered the arduous, 5,000-meter course in 15 minutes and 29 seconds. He missed Lauren Jespersen’s meet record by just three seconds, but eclipsed another former Klamath Union standout — Ian Dobson — in running the second-fastest time in meet history. "I’m not sure there’s anyone in this state who can beat him," said North Medford coach Pete Voskes of Stoutenburgh. "He’s a great runner and so tough-minded." Voskes’ boys team doesn’t have a standout like Stoutenburgh, but the Tornado’s blue-collar bunch nearly won the team title at Yreka, losing by a single point to Enterprise of Redding, Calif. WITH YEAR-ROUND action in most high school sports, you knew it was only a matter of time until baseball joined the party. Baseball Northwest, a training center and recruiting service based in Tacoma, Wash., has started a fall baseball season in Southern Oregon. The league is made up of teams from Phoenix, Josephine County, Bend, Eugene and Cottage Grove. FORMER ST. MARY’S standout Leah Sawyer helped the Stanford women’s cross country team to a first-place finish at the San Francisco Invitational on Sept. 3. Sawyer finished 36th in a field of 120 and clocked 19:35 over the 5,000-meter course. Sawyer is the Cardinal’s No. 5 runner. Reach reporter Don Hunt at 776-4469, or e-mail Surprise! Look which SOC teams are unbeaten ">[email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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