Seventh and eighth grade Hockinson Hawks tackle a Battle Ground athlete earlier this year in a Clark County Youth Football game. The young Hawks have proven to be one of the most dominant squads to ever come through the league, having outscored their opponents 272-34 this season.
Last week, Sean Mallory’s squad of stout seventh and eighth grade Hockinson boys were preparing for the Clark County Youth Football playoffs when he got a call from the league office.
Although his team had won every game in decisive fashion, proving themselves the heavy favorites for a championship, the league office informed them that they would not be a part of the playoffs.
Why? The other teams were refusing to play them.
The other coaches in the division felt it was not safe to face off against the Hockinson Hawks (the league is based on high school boundaries and teams wear the name and colors of where they’ll go to high school) and they shouldn’t have run up the scores as bad as they did in the regular season.
According to League President Terry Hyde, given that the league bases divisions on similar age groups, games generally stay well-balanced, but not this year.
Hockinson is far-and-away the best team, and it hasn’t been close.
They’ve outscored their opponents 272-34 after starting the season with 42-0, 32-0 and 63-0 wins. Hyde said other teams only started scoring after a mid-season meeting where Hockinson coaching staff were told to make games more enjoyable for both teams. Although scores were less lopsided the rest of the season, with the Hawks ending the year with an average margin of victory of 45-5, it wasn’t enough for the other teams.
They told the league office they would not pit their players against the Hawks again.
Mallory, who has been coaching the dominant group of Hockinson athletes since second and third grade, including his eighth-grade son, said he knew there was potential for lopsided wins by his team when league officials decided to combine seventh- and eighth-graders this year.
Mallory said he met with the other coaches and told them his eighth-graders were exceptionally talented and suggested that if they had to combine the grades, they rotate in a way that puts the respective grades against each other, which he thought would also make for safer play. He said the other coaches declined, and when he brought the same concerns to Hyde, the league president said the players needed to get used to playing against higher grades for high school anyways.
When Mallory’s predictions began to play out on the gridiron, he said the coaches still refused to make his suggested changes, and now his players are the ones that are suffering the consequences.
To Mallory, it’s not fair to a group of athletes who have competed for, and contributed to, a program since they were in second grade, along with the Hockinson community that has supported them.
“The same group of kids have been playing since second grade and they have nothing,” he said.
Mallory also doesn’t think his team should be punished because the other coaches refuse to play them.
While the other teams played out the playoffs for second place, the league office said they would try to find another game for youth Hawks, maybe an Oregon team, but given they had a bye last weekend, Mallory said the wait would be too long.
Furthermore, to Mallory, the gesture is shallow.
Although the league has already declared the Hawks champions of their division and are trying to work out a way for them to be formally declared the champs during halftime of a Hockinson High School football game in the coming weeks, the league will still hold a playoff this weekend without them and declare a second-place champion on Clark County turf, in front of local fans.
He thinks the league should have held the other team’s feet to the fire and said, “‘listen, you have an option: You can play the Hockinson Hawks in the championship or you don’t play.’”
Then, if the other team did not show up to the championship game, the kids would receive the accolades they deserve in front of the friends and family who helped support them.
Hyde believes this all could have been avoided if the Hawks’ coaching staff would have managed their team better. He doesn’t fault the other coaches for refusing to send their players back out for another lopsided loss.
“This is a unique situation,” Hyde said. “In the 35-year history of the league, we’ve never had this. We’ve had teams that have been dominant, but coaches have always done a good job of managing that.”
He didn’t see that from the Hawks’ coaching staff this year.
“Had the coaching staff managed it a little better, made the games a little more equitable for everyone, not just their team, maybe one of the other four teams would have felt, ‘yeah, we can step up and play this team,’” he said.
