By Oly Archibald
PORT ANGELES — The 2023 -24 high school sports season is upon us and it will be a big year for the Port Angeles Roughrider football team. Former Elma Eagle Dustin Clark returns for his 3rd consecutive season as the Roughriders’ head coach along with his entire coaching staff. Its doubtful most Roughriders can remember the last time the Roughriders had a head coach for three consecutive years.
The Roughriders open the season at Blaine Friday night, a team the Roughriders ran over last year 33-19 in their home opener. However, the Roughriders then lost 6 consecutive games. The Roughriders gave up 57,52,36 and 42 points in their next 4 games. The Roughriders did win their last three games, which was a big confidence boost and with a large nucleus of returning starters Roughrider fans are thinking the Roughriders have a shot at the district’s 3rd playoff spot. For that to happen, the Roughriders will have to plug up their leaky defense that gave up 31 points per game last year. In the jamboree Saturday night, the Roughriders offense looked polished; even scoring on a nice drive against the North Kitsap #1 defense. However, the Roughrider defense gave up three touchdown passes against North Kitsap, Bainbridge and Kingston, showing there is still a lot of work to be done with the Roughrider pass defense.
Newsradio KONP will have the live broadcast of the Port Angeles- Blaine game Friday night with the pre-game show starting at 6 pm and the kickoff set for 7 pm. The Borderrites finished last season with a 1-8 record and have a new head coach in former Lynden Lion Andy Olson. Olson was an assistant coach for 3 years at state power Lynden, then the last 3 years helped rebuild the Burlington Edison program as an assistant coach.
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The top high school soccer player on the Olympic Peninsula has signed her letter of intent. The “Dungeness Rocket”, Taryn Johnson of Sequim, has signed with NCAA D2 power Minnesota St of Mankato Minnesota. Mankato is a city of over 44,000 South West of Minneapolis. The Mavericks went 14-2-6 last year season making it to the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament. Minnesota State, formerly known as Mankato State, is also a national power in football and hockey.
Johnson and her Wolves open the season Tuesday Sept 12th at home against North Mason.