Time for good news at Hudson’s Bay, Heritage

A few years ago, when Skyview’s football team was having a successful run of league championships and deep playoff runs, the fans of the Storm’s rivals had a special nickname for The Columbian.

“The Skyview Gazette.”

And now that the preeminent high school football program in the county resides on the east side, whenever we go cover a Camas football game, we receive tweets, emails and calls from people letting us know “there are other teams in the county than just Camas.”

It’s fine. We’re used to it. It’s been like that at every paper I’ve worked at. In fact, it’s like that at every paper that covers high school sports.

The most successful teams receive the lion’s share of the coverage. And the reason for that is simple.

Successful programs play more high-profile games against top-ranked teams. They play more games that determine league champions. They play more postseason games, when the spotlight shines brighter on fewer teams, particularly the deeper a team advances in the playoffs.

We started the season off giving each team equal billing in our prep football preview section. But once the season starts, the results of games will dictate which games we cover from week to week.

And that’s the way it’s always been.

But as journalists, we’re always on the lookout for those out-of-the-ordinary stories.

So when a team starts enjoying success after not having much success in recent memory, we’re excited at the opportunity to shine a spotlight on those teams.

Take the Hudson’s Bay football team for example.

After a thrilling 28-24 win over Evergreen on Friday, the Eagles are 2-1 for the first time since 2001.Even bigger than that, Friday’s win was a league win, so Bay is in first place in the 3A Greater St. Helens League.

The Eagles will stay there until at least Sept. 30 because Bay and Evergreen got the jump on league schedule over the rest of the league.

Friday’s game marked the return to the 3A GSHL for Bay after two seasons in the 2A GSHL — two seasons that resulted in a 1-11 mark for the Eagles in the 2A GSHL.

So there are good things happening at Bay. And if they can keep it going, it would not be a big stretch to imagine the Eagles claiming one of the 3A GSHL’s three postseason berths, something Bay hasn’t done since that 2001 season.

And there are good things happening across town at Heritage, too.

The Timberwolves’ 27-7 win over West Valley of Yakima on Saturday pushed Heritage to its first 3-0 start in school history.

The Timberwolves’ defense has allowed only two touchdowns all season and none in its past two games.

If Heritage can keep things going, the Timberwolves will look to push their record to 4-0 when they travel to play Redmond next Friday. If they do that, it will match the most wins in a season at Heritage since 2009, and we wouldn’t even be out of September yet.

And the success at Heritage stretches beyond just the gridrion. The combined win-loss record of the Timberwolves’ football, soccer, volleyball and tennis teams this fall is 14-1-1.

Now, the grain-of-salt folks will remark that these wins came in non-league games and the real tests will come later when league play begins.

But, hey, wins are wins are wins.

And we’re glad we can share some good news.

Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at 735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.