PORT ANGELES — Having taken in four Forks football contests this season — area clashes with Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend and last week’s instant classic against Elma — I feel justified in admitting the following:
• Hayden Queen is a monster for Forks on both sides of the ball.
• That’s a lot of Spartan football, half of the team’s schedule thus far.
• And I’ll admit I didn’t learn this thing at Spartan Stadium last Friday. It was just confirmed: The junior captain plays linebacker and wide receiver for the Spartans and rarely, if ever, leaves the field.
Midway through the second quarter of the Elma game, I noticed Queen on the sideline next to head coach Trevor Highfield.
I made a mental note to ask about that play — that’s all it was, one play — in my postgame interview with Highfield.
Forks loves to play an uptempo brand of offense — a challenge for your stat-taking, highlight-gathering sports reporter — and Highfield needed a little more speed to the line of scrimmage.
“I pulled him to tell him he needs to line up faster,” Highfield said. “That’s the only reason I’d take him off the field — to yell at him a bit. He’s a phenomenal player, a tremendous leader — he was a team captain as a sophomore. That’s why I say the future is bright for the Spartans. We’ve got a guy like that with the want and the will.”
Queen’s level of want-to and will-do is off the charts, Highfield said.
“We talk a lot about this — is our why — why we are doing things, our why just has to be stronger than any what any what that we are doing, any what that we face.
“That kid’s why is strong. He plays for Forks, he plays for his family, he just plays hard.”
And Queen is described as a good-natured, well-adjusted and funny member of the Forks football community.
“That’s what I was told about him [before meeting the team],” Highfield said.
“The thing I’ve appreciated about him this football season — he’s done a good job this season of focusing during our work time. When we are out of practice in the weight room or in the film room he does a really good job of focusing himself and the team and he’s mature beyond his years.”
“We do study hall a couple of times a week, we do team dinners and he does a great job of leading the team during those events.”
And it’s more than a safe bet Queen will be making an appearance on the Peninsula Daily News’ All-Peninsula Football Team later this year.
Making the grade
A move Highfield made to address his squads scholastic habits — or lack thereof in many cases — is paying off for his Spartans — and should bode well for the Forks wrestling and boys basketball teams.
“It was a 1.2 team grade point average last year and my goal is a 3.0,” Highfield said. “The new grading period just came out and I think its about six kids who are struggling with grades, so it’s paying off. They are doing a really good job.”
Highfield said the team holds study halls a couple of times per week — just like big-time college programs such as Penn State, whose study hall program was profiled as part of HBO’s 24/7 College Football Program earlier this fall.
Change will do us good
Nothing is set in stone yet for the 2020-2024 WIAA classification process with student counts continuing at schools and final executive board approval scheduled for Jan. 26, 2020.
But it would be a surprise if there weren’t shakeups to the makeup of the North Olympic Peninsula prep lineup.
Chimacum and Forks being the most likely candidates for a move — from Class 1A to Class 2B for all sports.
“I’d be shocked if we weren’t 2B,” Forks football coach Trevor Highfield said. “We should have been 2B the last five years but the numbers were off.”
Highfield wouldn’t mind the move — provided the Spartans become a member of the Pacific 2B League, a 14-team league currently divided into an Independent Division (Northwest Christian and South Bend) a Coastal Division (Ocosta, Pe Ell-Willapa Valley, Raymond, Ilwaco, Chief Leschi and North Beach) and a Mountain Division (Adna, Life Christian, Morton-White Pass, Napavine, Onalaska and Rainier).
“I’ve looked at a lot of those teams, tough football, very good football. I don’t know if we will see any kind of drop off [from playing against state powers like Montesano in the Evergreen League].
Highfield is anticipating a more filled out league schedule with less gaps than the four-game Evergreen League regular-season slate.
“My excitement about 2B is not playing games that don’t mean anything [in the standings],” Highfield said of nonleague contests. My biggest issue for this season is we played a lot of games that didn’t mean anything. We could say, hey we are 3-1, but it really doesn’t matter. Then you play Montesano and go 0-1 and that’s really what it is. That’s a tough thing, going in and out of conference play.”
It would be a blow to our coverage of the Spartans on the gridiron, however. Playing those “games that don’t mean anything” against traditional North Olympic Peninsula foes such as Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend are an easy coverage call for us at the sports desk.
Not so much with North Beach. And isn’t that in Port Townsend, anyway?
I’d love to see the return of the Olympic League like it was in the 1960s and early 1970s. I wasn’t around for that, but back then the league had two classifications — a big school league with Port Angeles, Sequim, Bremerton, North Mason, South Kitsap (at times) and others and a small school league with Port Townsend, Forks and Chimacum. Add in the new schools that have sprouted since then (Kingston, Olympic, Klahowya).
Heck, add a B-school division and get Quilcene back playing ball in a league with Neah Bay, Crescent and Clallam Bay.
Pressed into service at fullback due to a rash of injuries, Port Townsend senior lineman Wes Blue scored a touchdown during the Redhawks 51-16 loss to Klahowya last Friday. (Lisa Jensen)
