KAMIAH - With Kamiah making headlines the past few weeks because of wildfires, coach Ryan Ball knows that the result of a high school football game will do little to fix what happened.
"We don't build new houses," he said, "but we can give people a couple hours on a Friday night to get away from those things and watch a good football team."
How good are the Kubs? They're picked in the Tribune coaches/media poll as the Whitepine League preseason favorite, and with six of eight starters returning on both offense and defense - including the team's one-two punch at quarterback (Parker Whipple) and tailback (Taylor McAlister) - the Kubs seem poised to continue their torrid pace offensively.
Running their no-huddle, which Ball installed when Kamiah moved to the eight-man level in 2012, the Kubs averaged 52 points per game last year and will get their first chance to put some more points on the board when they open their season tonight against Oakley at New Plymouth.
"It makes your team focus a lot during practices," Ball said of playing the opener against a team which fell to eventual state champion Prairie in the quarterfinals last year. "Win or lose, we'll learn a lot about ourselves that game."
While the Kubs feature plenty of speed, a characteristic Kamiah teams often possess, they lack depth this season, though "we feel the 20 (players) we have," Ball said, "are pretty good."
McAlister, an all-league running back, rushed for more than 1,400 yards last season. And early in the 2014 campaign, out of necessity, Whipple moved from lineman to quarterback after an injury.
But with his ability to break tackles and extend plays, Whipple immediately found himself named the full-time starter.
Ball calls Whipple "Little Mickey," because of his ability to find the smallest crease in a defense and come out the other side - like a mouse. But the Kub offense is anything but a Mickey Mouse operation.
"One of the key things I've always found (important) is our third-down conversions on both offense and defense," Ball said, noting that his team did an excellent job of stopping opponents on first and second down last year. "Our problem is we'd let people convert on third-and-long. So our goal is to make sure that when the defense has the advantage, we don't let other teams convert on those."
Anchoring the offensive line, Lars Kludt and Ian Anderson both return. With Kludt finally healthy - after playing most of last year on a "really bad knee"= - Ball expects him to dominate. Another athlete ready to enjoy a breakout season, Ball believes, is Chris Pethtel, who plays on both the defensive line and at tight end.
Kamiah has made the state playoffs two of the three years it's played eight-man football - and 18 of the past 22 years in all forms of football.
"It's always a competitive league, even long before we joined it, it was competitive," Ball said of the Whitepine League race, which may come down to the final week of the season, when defending state champion Prairie visits Kamiah on Oct. 23.
"You earn every victory you get in that league, we found that out after we won the state championship," Ball said. "Despite what you did the year before, you've got to come back because these teams are really well-coached and loaded with talent. This league is so difficult that I don't know if you can focus on any one game."
