Nestled in a small bowl in Burien, Highline Stadium hosted a battle in the Seamount Conference on Friday, Sept. 18.

The Pirates of Highline (0-2) met the visiting Rams from Mt. Rainier (2-0).

Mt. Rainier entered the contest with an impressive 44-0 victory over Evergreen and the Pirates had lost two previous games by the slimmest of margins.

A win for the Rams keeps them in the hunt and a loss for the Pirates digs a huge hole.

Even with two losses Highline’s head coach, Juan Cotto, has kept his “team” focused on three goals wrapped in a ‘team’ concept.

“We work on playing hard for 48 solid minutes. Our focus is to never give up,” coach Cotto says enthusiastically as his team warms up before the kickoff. “We want our kids to have fun playing football built on fundamentals.”

His counterpart, head coach Chris Paulsen, bases his success on the experience of the line, and the strength on both sides of the ball.

“My guys, the ones in the trenches, have bought into the weight room. They are strong, play physical and work hard,” says coach Paulsen.

Our contest with Mt. Rainier in the background sees two teams play hard-nosed, hard-hitting football through the first quarter with neither team mounting drives due to defensive stands.

Hampered by some key penalties, Mt. Rainier nullified two huge pass plays from quarterback, Caleb Saulo, to his wide receivers.

The woes of the Rams continued in the second quarter.

At the 8:50 mark in the second quarter, an errant snap sent the ball downed inside the Ram 20 yd line.

Three plays later Guyson Jaramillo-King ran for 13 yards for a touchdown. The extra point was blocked.

Another miscue from the Ram long-snapper with under 50 seconds left before half put the ball inside their 10 and the Highline quarterback, Austin Rodriguez, found wide reciever Tevon Jones in the end zone and the 2pt conversion was good by Jaramillo-King.

Highline lead Mt. Ranier 14 - 0 at the half.

The second was much different from the first. Both offenses moved the ball, with huge plays for both teams.

After receiving the kickoff, it only took the Rams three plays before Saulo hooked up with wide-out, Delvonte Allifua, which netted a huge 76 yd TD.

The strong arm of Saulo was ineffective in the first half but this pass traveled 45 in the air and Allifua caught it in stride. The extra-point was good.

The Pirates answered at the 4:11 mark of the third quarter with some great blocking that allowed Guyson to go untouched for his second touchdown covering 64 yards. The extra point failed. Highline’s answer made the score 20-7 that continued well into the 4th quarter.

That is when the momentum changed.

The large and physical line of the Rams opened huge holes for the athleticism of quarterback Saulo, and running back Vaifale, to run rampant through the defense of the Pirates.

Two scores under 6:28 to play in the game turned a dominated game by the Pirates into another close loss.

Vaifale had a great fourth quarter rushing for 91 of his 213 yds. He found the end zone running through would-be tacklers at will scoring one of two TD’s in that fourth quarter.

The first TD was followed by an on-side kick recovery and then capped with a 26 TD run and with the extra point , by Bodle, placed the Rams with their first lead with under 3 minutes to play.

The Highline Pirates hopes were stopped on an incomplete pass on fourth down with :50 to go in the game.

The Pirates are now 0-3 and played in a great game but came up short on the 21-20 score.

Hard hitting Krugba Mansaray, the four year varsity line-backer, remarks, “We played hard! I am happy to play for this team.”

The Rams now go 3-0 and face the well-coached Foster Bulldogs next week.

A great night of football that was exciting to the end. Hard to find a loser in this one.