Christian Faith deals Evergreen Lutheran an opening loss
Tue, 09/11/2007
It was a day of new beginnings at Federal Way Memorial Field.
It was the first ever football game played by Evergreen Lutheran High School of Des Moines, and the first game played in Federal Way by a Christian Faith School team that was set to move from SeaTac to Federal Way for services the next day.
The end result of a 32-10 win for Christian Faith after only leading 12-3 at halftime and 18-10 in the third quarter was acceptable for both teams.
"I wish we'd have been that good our first year," said CFS head coach Sauni Savini after the action under mostly sunny skies on the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 1.
"We were fired up," said Evergreen Lutheran head coach Jeff Kurbis. "It was the first time we played football. If you can't get fired up for just playing your first game, you're in trouble. Both teams came here and played hard and the fans were cheering in the stands. It was most impressive."
The two teams share the nickname of "Eagles", and both are members of the SeaTac B League in most sports. But the entire schedule for the Evergreen Lutheran football team will be of the non-league independent variety this year.
The final six games for Evergreen Lutheran will be against SeaTac B League junior varsity teams after three against varsity squads.
But that is only a temporary setup for this year, when the Lutheran squad will play home games at Fife High School. Both are 2B teams, just above the 1B level that plays eight man football.
The Federal Way Memorial home games setup for Christian Faith are also temporary.
"Our church is moving to Federal Way," said Savini. "This is our home field this year until we get our own field ready. That's the plan. We start practice on our own field Tuesday. A lot of kids will be thrilled with that."
Christian Faith is coming off an undefeated SeaTac season.
"We have a good little team with only 16 guys on the team," Savini said. "In the new building we had to reduce our enrollment and we lost about eight players. The kids are defending their title and we'll see how it goes."
Savini's son Cameron started off the scoring in the opener, with the 6-0, 215 running back punching the ball in for a 1-yard touchdown.
Cameron's freshman brother Tyler is starting at quarterback as only a freshman.
Evergreen Lutheran's first-ever points were also all in the family, as Kurbis' son Daniel booted a 22-yard field goal through the uprights.
A 10-yard run by Cameron Savini pushed the lead up to 12-3 with 1:13 left in the half, with a two-point coversion attempt failing for the second time.
Christian Faith found the same result after an 11-yard Cameron Savini touchdown run with 10:33 left in the third quarter made it 18-3.
Evergreen Lutheran answered with 7:39 to go as junior quarterback Jack Parker hit Kurbis on a 22-yard touchdown play. Kurbis then booted the extra point to close the gap to 18-10.
Christian Faith did not pull away until the end of the third quarter.
Tyler Savini scored on a 12-yard "bootleg" run with 6:18 to go, then ran for a two-point conversion to make it 26-10. Junior Chad Ostrom then scored on an 11-yard punt return at 3:27 left in the third quarter to bring what turned out to be the final score to 32-10.
Kurbis still left with a good impression of his team, which had only four players that played tackle football before.
"For guys who never tackled anybody but ourselves , that was good," said Kurbis. "We were in this game."