By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

WEST SALEM, Ore.– The 2015 season didn’t go according to plan for the 2015 West Salem High School Football team.  Injuries plagued the team, but they overcame the adversity and finished third in the Greater Valley conference behind South Salem and Sprague.

They shutout Franklin 32-0 to open the 6A playoffs, but were defeated by the third-ranked team in the bracket, West Linn, 42-14.

But that won’t be looked at negatively said junior Keonte McMurrin.

“I think it’ll be in the back of my mind a little bit that 42-14,” said McMurrin.  “I’ll keep that in my mind, but we got to move on from it and it’ll be a good season next year.

“It’s a good season and we’ll come into next year with a real chip on our shoulders.  This is not how we wanted this to end, but we’ll be ready for next year.”

Head Coach Shawn Stanley added that he has coached semi-finalist teams and have the talent more than  this years team; but Stanley said that it was the character of the team will stick with him forever.

“ Winning games are easy, going to semi-final games and everything’s going your way and everyone’s patting you on the back, it doesn’t take character.,” he said. “It takes character to get kicked in the teeth once in a while and keep coming back and keep allowing us to coach them.

“A lot of parents were saying thank you to our coaches and I say thank you to them cause they gave us great young men to work with.  I’m truly blessed.”

Stanley had to plug in more sophomores in 2015 than he has ever had to during his tenure as Titans Head Coach.

But with that, the experience of facing adversity this year plus the senior leadership, Stanley believes that it’ll equal to success in the future.

“We’ve never played those many sophomores before and I think that’s good and the seniors did a great job modeling that character,” he said.  “That resiliency and the ability to face adversity I think is going to carry on.”

As for advice for the youngins, Senior Quarterback Brody Wittman had some:

Play Like it’s your last down.

“Just keep playing hard and time fly’s,” said Wittman holding back tears.   “So play every play like it’s your last play,” “You’ll never know when that’ll be your last play, so play every game like it’s your last.”

As for reminding the team of that Friday the 13^th night in West Linn, Coach Stanley won’t have to remind them to motivate them entering the offseason and next season.

“I don’t think I have to remind them of anything,” he said.  “I think the kids here would know that this is a bad taste in their mouth and we got to work to get better.”

PHOTO GALLERY BY JEREMY MCDONALD (PICTURES FROM WEST LINN, FRANKLIN AND MCKAY GAMES)

Jeremy McDonald is a professional sports journalist in the Salem/Portland area and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalist in Oregon with B.S. degrees from Southern Oregon University in Journalism (2011) and Health/PE (2013).  Got a story idea? Email him at jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com or on Twitter at @J_McDonald81!

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