WOODLAND — La Center always felt in control of Friday night’s first-round Class 1A state playoff game against Port Townsend.
The Wildcats couldn’t feel comfortable, though, until turning to senior Jeffrey Mayolo to carry them home.
Mayolo ran for 62 of his game-high 135 yards on the clinching drive, punching the ball in for a 1-yard touchdown with 7:31 to play as No. 6 La Center pulled out a 28-7 victory over the Redhawks at Beaver Stadium.
The Wildcats (10-1) reached the quarterfinals for the first time since 2013. They will host the winner of tonight’s Hoquiam-Mount Baker game next weekend, most likely again at Beaver Stadium.
“He’s been doing it for us all year,” said Wildcats coach John Lambert of Mayolo, the Trico co-Offensive Player of the Year who has rushed for more than 1,300 yards this season.
“He made the whole drive for us. We haven’t done a ton of that this year — being physical, being able to control the line of scrimmage like that. It was nice to see we can execute like that when we need to.”
La Center led 21-7 at halftime, but it had let the Redhawks (7-4) hang around with a pair of interceptions that spoiled promising drives.
So after forcing a punt midway through the third quarter, Lambert and the Wildcats eschewed the pass and turned to their running game exclusively to put the game away.
They held the ball for almost 10 minutes, marching 83 yards in 17 plays – all runs. Mayolo carried the ball 13 times on the drive, converting twice on third down. After being stopped twice on the goal line, he finally sliced through a hole on the right side of the line on fourth down for the score.
“That felt really good,” Mayolo said, “enforcing our will on them. They just couldn’t stop us. Being a senior, every game could be our last game, so we’ve just got to go and play our hearts out because we don’t want our season to end.”
La Center got off to the perfect start to the game. Thomas Dreyer recovered a squib kickoff at the Redhawks 39, and three plays later, Evan Honore ran for a 35-yard touchdown just 2:09 into the contest.
After holding on fourth down at its 24, La Center needed 11 plays – including a 20-yard scramble by Trico MVP Jeremy Scott on fourth-and-9 at midfield – to get into the end zone on a 16-yard pass from Scott to Honore.
A three-and-out and a shanked punt gave the Wildcats the ball back at the PT 19, but they couldn’t take advantage and the Redhawks capitalized with their only scoring drive. Berkley Hill hit a wide-open Detrius Kelsall on a 37-yard TD pass with 7:53 left before halftime.
Noa Apker-Montoya then got the first of his three interceptions on La Center’s next possession, and the Wildcats faithful grew restless.
“We just had to take a second and think, Guys, this isn’t how we play,” Mayolo said. “We were just shooting ourselves in the foot. We had to make sure that we were getting our blocks, not making mistakes and play LC football.”
That meant forcing another three-and-out and cashing in with the ground attack. La Center needed only six plays and 57 seconds to build the lead to 21-7 at halftime, with Colton Dolezal rumbling 13 yards for the touchdown with 21 seconds left.
“We were never worried, but we just weren’t finishing drives, and that kept them in the game,” Lambert said. “We just came out and decided, let’s run the ball and impose our will. We were really being physical, and that made the difference.”
The Wildcats finished with 300 rushing yards while holding PT to just 108 on the ground and 166 total.
“It was just a team effort,” said junior nose guard Jack Hiller, who had a team-high eight tackles. “We were concerned about their run game. Everyone put in everything that we had, and it came out well in the end.”
No matter who La Center gets next week, it’ll be a familiar opponent. The Wildcats beat Hoquiam 30-6 in Week 4 of the season, while Mount Baker eliminated them from the playoffs in 2012 and 2013 — both times in the quarterfinals.
