By Paul Moseley

The Seattle Lutheran Saints hosted the Lake Roosevelt Raiders at West Seattle Stadium in their first Sea-Tac/Northwest conference game of the season. Coming off a solid win over Evergreen Lutheran last week, the hard-hitting Saints had good reason for optimism. The Raiders were fresh off of a 56-0 loss to Davenport last week, and made a 5-hour school bus trip over the Snoqualmie pass the morning of the game.

Early in the game, the Saints must have felt like they were in that Lindsay Lohan movie where she wakes up in Jamie Curtis’ body (before the good yogurt)…nothing quite worked like it was supposed to.

The Saints were missing running back/linebacker Abijah Smith, still recovering from his head injury from the helmet to helmet hit last week that took him out of the game, but still had clutch players including #5 Grant Doer and #13 Ben Sanders.

The Saints showed early promise with a 51 yard halfback pass to Isaiah Dowding-Albrecht that put them on the 3 yard line. Unable to convert, they went for the field goal that was blocked and never got close to the goal again.

It was all Lake Roosevelt for the next 3 quarters.

The Eagles established a running game early. In fact, that’s all they did. Every bit of their 339 yards of total offense was on the ground.

Lake Roosevelt scored on runs from scrimmage of 26 and 38 yards in the first half, plus a punt return for 65 yards.

At the half, the Raiders were up 33-0 and the Saints went to the locker room to figure out how to break the curse.

At the start of the 2nd half, the Saints made some offensive adjustments and tried to find a way to stop the Raiders running threat that picked them apart up the middle, off-tackle and outside. The Raiders struck one more time in the 3rd quarter a 41 yard TD run, making the final score 40-0.

There was a bright spot this week for the Saints. Tyler Hammond, a 5’1”, 110 pound freshman came into the game at running back in the 3rd quarter. At first glance, he is a fraction of the size of the linemen he’s running into, but he demonstrated awesome speed and toughness, driving right into the middle of the line. Even though he came into the game in the third quarter, he ended with 56 yards on 9 carries, helping the Saints put together a string of first downs at the end of the game.

The Saints finished the game with 88 rushing yards and 113 passing yards. The Raiders finished with a remarkable 339 rushing yards and 0 passing yards.

Asked what happened this week, Saints Coach Jeff Scott pointed to injuries early in the game. "we lost 3 starters in first series...center, running back and receiver”. However, throughout the game he kept positive with his team, coaching them to the end with encouragement.

Next week, the Saints are away against Wishkah Valley in Aberdeen.