Lummi falls again to rivals from Neah Bay

The streak is now nine — nine straight times the Lummi football team has been turned away by Northwest 1B League rival Neah Bay.

The Blackhawks’ 62-12 league loss on the peninsula Friday, Oct. 16, is just the latest in a long line of frustrations in the series dating back to Lummi’s 40-12 regular-season victory on Oct. 28, 2011. Since then, the Red Devils have ended Lummi’s season in the state playoffs each of the past four seasons.

Friday it looked like the Blackhawks (4-2, 2-1 NW1B), though undermanned and very young, might have a shot to stop the streak, as they trailed 14-6 late in the first half. But Neah Bay got a long scoring pass just 12 second before halftime and then returned the kickoff to start the second half for a TD.

“That took the air out of us,” Lummi coach Jim Sandusky said in a phone interview. “We felt like we handed them a couple of TDs in the first half, and then we handed them another. It was pretty frustrating.”

So were a few injuries that forced Sandusky to turn to inexperienced backups and a few missed scoring opportunities in the red zone.

“It was one of those things, where you just kept feeling it slipping away,” Sandusky said.

Sandusky said he was pleased by the play of Free and Raven Borsey on defense and the offensive line also had a pretty good game.

Lummi next hosts Darrington in a non-league game on Friday, Oct. 23.

This story was originally published October 16, 2015 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Lummi falls again to rivals from Neah Bay."