Gridiron Classic | 4A: Skyline trying to be no less than perfect

SPOKANE — At about 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning, four Skyline parents grabbed shovels and squeegees and went to work.

In 30-degree cold, they cleared a 100-yard driveway of the previous night's snowfall. For almost an hour, they pushed about an inch of snow off the turf at Albi Stadium, the site of last Saturday's Class 4A semifinal.

Across town, their players huddled in the back corner of a hotel parking lot, surrounded by dumpsters, a trio of buses and oil-stained chunks of snow and ice. Breaths poured from their mouths like smoke from the factory in the distance behind them as they ran through their defensive sets.

"Do it again!" defensive coordinator Chad Barrett yelled.

Barrett barked out different formations and directed numerous shifts. With each new order, the defense had a new adjustment to make, likely something Barrett excavated through hours of film study. Less than three hours before Skyline played Ferris of Spokane, Barrett and first-year Skyline coach Mat Taylor took no chances that any preparation was lost on the bus ride here.

"Our kids prepare better than any kids you could ever imagine," Barrett says. "They understand what the expectation is."

The expectations have been enormous. Skyline vaulted into national football rankings this season in large part because of its prized quarterback, junior Jake Heaps, and his two spectacular receivers, senior Gino Simone and sophomore Kasen Williams. Each could be the state's top recruit in his senior season.

But the reasons the Spartans have stayed among the country's top-rated teams as they made their way to today's Class 4A championship game — they are ranked sixth by USA Today — go beyond three players. Skyline is 13-0, the KingCo 4A champion and a state finalist because a combination of skill and support, of coaching and confidence, of preparation and poise.

If Skyline beats district rival Issaquah tonight at 7:30 at the Tacoma Dome, the Spartans will finish as one of the most talented and most complete championship teams in the state's history.

"Where's the weakness in this ballclub?" asked John Bowers, a lifelong college coach and recruiter until he took over at Ballard this season. "It's hard to find one. Groups like this don't come around very often.

"Their ranking is well put," added Bowers, who has recruited extensively in football hotbeds such as Ohio and Florida. "I could see them being the top team in the country. Not just sixth, but the top."

But lose today, especially to a rival Issaquah team it beat 38-0 seven weeks ago, and Skyline knows this conversation evaporates in a second. Lose today, and the Spartans couldn't make the case as one of the best teams in state history. Lose today, and they won't even rank higher than the three Skyline teams that won titles before them.

"With a win Friday night, we can start talking about it," Simone says.

A change at the top

On March 4, a Monday morning, there was a largely unexpected team meeting. Skyline's players huddled around Steve Gervais, the 11-year coach at Skyline, who struggled with breaking his news. Gervais, who had coached the Spartans to titles in 2000, 2005 and then again last season, had just accepted a job on Tyrone Willingham's coaching staff at Washington.

"The kids just loved Gerv," Taylor says.

They weren't alone. For nine years, Taylor worked behind Gervais. Gervais was known for his ingenuity in bringing the spread offense to Washington high-school football, but Taylor admired him for more than his offensive genius. Gervais was ultra-laid-back. He rarely ran his players after practice and he never had an issue with his players calling him simply "Gerv."

"These kids would do anything for him," Taylor says.

Simone, a senior receiver, realizes now that Gervais had been grooming Taylor for the day he left. Simone sees many of the same qualities in the two. Like Gervais, Taylor rarely loses his calm. And as the receivers coach for nine years, Taylor had helped design many of Skyline's spread-offense plays.

"It was a no-brainer," Simone says of Taylor's hiring. "And obviously he was ready; we're 13-0 and playing for a state championship."

Like Gervais before him, Taylor calls the plays on offense, but he leaves the defense alone. That's Chad Barrett's territory.

Defensive coach never rests

The defense for every Friday night begins early Saturday morning with a stack of tapes. Barrett will spend the entire weekend looking at every second of film he can get.

"The Monday before the Auburn [quarterfinal] game, he said, 'Guys, I know exactly what they're going to run because I broke down every single one of their games,' " lineman Grant Engel says.

Simone calls him a genius, and remembers when Barrett's baby was born last spring.

"How's the kid?" they asked when he returned.

"He'll have the defense down in a week," Barrett replied.

Eleven years ago, Barrett was an All-SPSL South lineman for Gervais at Rogers of Puyallup who always told Gervais he wanted to coach with him one day. Six years ago, he came to Skyline and quickly worked his way up to defensive coordinator.

"He has always had that very intense, fiery personality," Gervais says. "He's very thorough."

Barrett inputs all of his tape into complex computer programs that tell him what certain teams do in specific situations, such as third-and-six, or on first-and-10 coming out of halftime. Even the smallest tendencies can pay off.

"If you get in deep, you can really find stuff you can help your kids on," he says.

Barrett will run through 60 plays in a 25-minute period, rushing through until his players get to the point that they stop thinking about what they should do, and simply know and trust their assignment.

"I think the biggest thing you need is for your kids to react and play fast," Barrett says.

Through the first 13 games, there's no doubting the results. Skyline's starting defense has allowed only four touchdowns this season, and junior Anthony DeMatteo, a wrestler with a mean streak, was the KingCo Crest Division's defensive player of the year. Six other Spartans finished on the first-team all-division team for a defense that constantly gave Skyline's spread offense short fields.

As if that offense needed the help.

Three elite recruits

Since Gervais brought the spread, Skyline has been a turnstile for 2,000-yard quarterbacks. But none has been quite like Heaps, a junior who was named Wednesday as the Gatorade State Player of the Year.

"If there's a better QB anywhere in the country, I want to see him," says Bowers, the Ballard coach. "That kid is a special kid."

Heaps, named by some recruiting analysts as the top junior in the country, moved to Sammamish in the fifth grade. Simone, Scout.com's top senior recruit in the state, and Williams, who already has three Division I offers, grew up on the plateau. But even as they all developed in Skyline's junior program, this has been the only season where all three elite recruits started together for an entire season.

"It's very rare, especially in as big a state as Washington, to have three of those guys," says Greg Biggins, a West Coast recruiting analyst for ESPN Rise. "Jake could be the top quarterback in his class, and Kasen could be the top player in the Western region, period."

When Williams became a prominent part of the offense late last season, teams had to stop double-teaming Simone — or pay the price. But defending Skyline became even more difficult this season, with senior receivers Jake Knecht and William Chandler joining Skyline's four-wideout formation.

"Those kids are great high-school receivers," says Bothell coach Tom Bainter, whose team lost 16-12 to Skyline in the KingCo 4A championship game. "In any other program, they're the one and the two. What they prevent you from doing is you can't double a guy. If you do, then that means three other guys have single coverage. They just present a problem."

Bainter, after 20 years of coaching, can only remember one team that compares to this year's Skyline team: the 1996 Woodinville team featuring Marques Tuiasosopo. But that team is rarely part of the conversation Skyline hopes to join tonight for one simple reason: Tuiasosopo's Falcons did not win the state championship.

"I look at Skyline, and I don't know that there's a weakness," Bainter says. "The way to beat them is you have to play perfect football."

Tom Wyrwich: 206-515-5653 or twyrwich@seattletimes.com