Prep Football | E-W rides Heard (265 yards) to quarterfinals

TACOMA — The bus carrying the Edmonds-Woodway football team to its playoff game Friday night against Curtis was late.

The Edmonds-Woodway offense was even later.

But the second-ranked Warriors did finally show up, climbing out of a 17-point deficit and rallying for an improbable 41-38 victory over Curtis in a first-round game of the Class 4A state playoffs at Mount Tahoma High .

Edmonds-Woodway (11-0) will face Tahoma or Woodinville in a quarterfinal game next weekend. Coach Bob Lucey of Curtis (8-3) had his 31-year coaching career end with the heartbreaking loss.

The game started 15 minutes late because the late-arriving Edmonds-Woodway team bus was stuck in rush-hour traffic. The Warriors got started late, too, as Curtis bolted to a 17-0 first-half lead.

But Edmonds-Woodway senior running back Josh Heard scored a touchdown late in the first half to cut the lead to 17-7, and kept it going in the second half.

Heard finished with five touchdowns and 265 yards on 26 carries, including the winning score with 24 seconds left.

It was a game that seemingly belonged to Curtis.

Not only did the Vikings lead 17-0 in the first half, Curtis also led 38-33 after a 26-yard touchdown pass from Gerald Hill to Tyree Williams with 2:35 remaining. And when the Vikings stopped E-W on downs with just over a minute left, it seemed Edmonds-Woodway's season was over.

But Curtis fumbled and E-W recovered at midfield with 1:09 left. On first down, Heard ran 46 yards to the 4-yard line. Three plays later, he went through the middle to score with 24 seconds remaining.

"Even when they had 20 seconds left, we thought that might have been enough," said E-W coach John Gradwohl. "What a great game. Those were two teams that kept fighting back and forth. Those were two awesome teams out there."

Heard scored on touchdown runs of 18, 66, 4, 66 and 1 yard. Eric Greenwood returned a kickoff 81 yards for the Warriors' other score.