High School Sports Blog

Mason Kelley covers High School Sports for The Seattle Times. Sandy Ringer is also a frequent contributor to this blog.

September 21, 2009 at 4:32 PM

Bothell football learned from last year's early misfortune

Three weeks into the season, Tom Bainter still sees room for improvement.

The Bothell coach is happy with his defense -- two straight shutouts -- and his offense is progressing nicely -- although he would like to cut down on the mental mistakes -- but he doesn't want his team to get complacent.

"I just think you try to have a little better knowledge every week,"Bainter said. "You try to get off the ball a little faster every week. You try to execute your assignments with greater effort every week and those are the things we’ll focus on."

Last season, the Cougars (3-0) dropped their first two games before making a run to the 4A quarterfinals. They knew they were a talented group in 2008, and the early losses provided some humility that continues to stick with the team.

"I think last year helped us understand that you can’t just show up and win," Bainter said. "You have to earn a victory, and you have to get better and we talked about that last year. Had we been better early, maybe we go further than the quarters.

"You’re going to peak at some point and, if you keep getting better, the ladder only gets so high and, if you don’t start on the first few rungs at the beginning of the season, then you have to touch them all anyway."

Outside of the satisfaction of a perfect start, and two victories against ranked opponents, Bainter downplayed the importance of this early season run, after all, Bothell opens KingCo 4A Crown Division play this Friday on the road against Lake Washington.

"You get out of this league and you’re a pretty good football team, that’s for sure," Bainter said.

I also talked to Interlake's Sheldon Cross and Issaquah's Chris Bennett and I will post a blog on those schools later. I'm going to try and catch up with a few more coaches as the week goes on.

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Bothell football learned from last year's early misfortune

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