With a first-year head coach, a sophomore quarterback and just six seniors on the roster, a slow start to the season wouldn’t be unexpected for this year’s young Meadowdale Mavericks football squad. But despite a second defeat to open the year, Coach Antwoine Gamble said there is still some optimism in the Mavericks’ camp.

After a loss to Kamiak on Sept. 6, the Mavs showed their growing pains again this week with a 47-14 setback to the Shorewood Stormrays in a Wesco League South Conference contest played Friday at Shoreline Stadium.

The Stormrays scored touchdowns on seven of their eight offensive possessions and held a 40-0 lead before Meadowdale found the end zone twice in the fourth quarter to avoid the shutout.

While Shorewood held a big advantage in most of the game statistics, the Mavericks did run for nearly 200 yards thanks primarily to the work of the team’s offensive linemen.

“We always anchor ourselves in our offensive line,” Gamble said. “We call them our MVPs, our big sexies. We really try hard to be true to who we are.”

“We’ve got to give credit to our offensive line.” he added.

Even when the team was down big on the scoreboard and a pair of Mavs running backs were hobbled by injuries, Gamble insisted his offense keep running the ball behind the big blockers.

“It’d be easy to be down that big to go ahead and start to try to air it out but the idea for us is to establish the identity, establish who we want to be,” Gamble insisted. “And that is our big offensive line.”

The emphasis paid off late when Caden Rivera reached the end zone on TD runs of 11 and 46byards. The sophomore rushed 13 times for 101 yards to lead the Mavs offensive attack.

But the Meadowdale offense was inconsistent in the first half and lost possession of the ball with fumbles twice to set up short scoring drives for the Stormrays.

“We had a few costly turnovers in the beginning, in the first half,” Gamble noted. “So it was kind of hard to bounce back from a huge deficit like that.”

Shorewood racked up 424 total yards in the game and was led by senior quarterback Tyler Giles, who ran for 108 yards in the game and two touchdowns in addition to completing two passes — both touchdown tosses — for 70 yards.

Gamble admitted his Mavericks’ defensive unit will need to improve.

“Ideally we’d like to see ourselves get a little bit sound on our blocking techniques and defensively sound in our tackling,” Gamble said. “We had a lot of schemes that were called, a lot of formations that were called that worked out great; we just didn’t execute on those tackles. We’ve got to get right, we’ve got to get better in practice on tackling.”

The Mavericks haven’t had a winning season on the gridiron since 2016 and are on their third head coach in the past three seasons. But Gamble believes this is a big season for Meadowdale as the team has left the lower-tier Polk Division of the 3A Wesco League and will play a full Wesco League South Conference schedule, competing against — among others — Monroe, Mountlake Terrace and Edmonds-Woodway, all 3A playoff teams from last season.

“Our team is buying in, our team is believing in the new system, the new coaches, new players,” Gamble said.

And while Gamble has his sights on improving the Mavericks performance on the field over the next three seasons (as his son Ki, as a sophomore, is holding down the quarterback position), the coach also wants everyone to know that the future is also now for Meadowdale football.

“Yes, we see the long term,” Gamble said, “but we know we have the skills and we have the players to do it right now. We really do, I know we do. We’ve just got to fine tune some things.”

Prep Football: Meadowdale at Shorewood, Sept. 13

Meadowdale   0   0   0 14 – 14

Shorewood 13 20   7   7 – 47

1st quarter scoring:

  6:45 – Tyler Giles (Shorewood) 51-yard TD run; Kaare Nye PAT kick good

  1:38 – Tyler Giles (Shorewood) 27 yard TD pass to Finn Bachler; two-point conversion attempt failed

2nd quarter scoring:

11:36 – Kevin Haslam Jr. (Shorewood) 56-yard TD run; PAT kick no good

  5:40 – Gatsby Palmer (Shorewood) 1-yard TD run; Kaare Nye PAT kick good

  4:42 – Tyler Giles (Shorewood) 4-yard TD run; Kaare Nye PAT kick good

3rd quarter scoring:

  7:36 – Tyler Giles (Shorewood) 43-yard TD pass to Jack Gallagher; Karre Nye PAT kick good

4th quarter scoring:

10:30 – Caden Rivera (Meadowdale) 11-yard TD run; Becket Cruz PAT kick good

  7:56 – Caden Rivera (Meadowdale) 46-yard TD run; Becket Cruz PAT kick good

  2:15 – Julien Woodruff (Shorewood) 2-yard TD run; Karre Nye PAT kick good

Records: Meadowdale 0-1 in Wesco League South Conference, 0-2 overall; Shorewood 1-0 in 3A Wesco League South Conference, 2-0 overall

Meadowdale next game: versus Mountlake Terrace; Friday, Sept. 20; 5 p.m. at Edmonds Stadium

Shorewood next game: versus Monroe; Friday, Sept. 20; 7 p.m. at Monroe High School

— Story and photos by Doug Petrowski