Late Gladstone rally dooms St. Helens football in home debut

The 2024 St. Helens football team is a work in progress, but despite back-to-back losses to start the season, head coach Nic Shular is pleased with his team’s effort and believes they’re moving in the right direction.

“The kids have responded great after these two losses,” Shular said. “We’ve been competitive in both games and have felt like those were winnable games, we just have a lot of first-time varsity kids who are learning how difficult it is to win at the varsity level and are still learning what it takes.”

That was evident in the team’s most recent defeat, a 28-18 loss to Gladstone/Riverdale in their home-opener on Sept. 13.

The Lions led the visiting Gladiators at the half, but an inability to get the visitors off the field defensively haunted St. Helens over the course of the second half, and ultimately its lack of finishing drives offensively amounted to defeat.

“Gladstone took control of the game in that fourth quarter,” the coach said. “I was happy with our team’s effort, but these first two weeks we haven’t yet put together a complete game of playing to our potential for four quarters. Right now, we’re putting together 2-3 good quarters of football each game and our kids are learning that at the varsity level that is not good enough to get a win.”

Shular cited a couple instances in the game in which his team was close, but ultimately not close enough.

On St. Helens’ opening drive, it drove inside the Gladiators’ 5-yard line but failed to get points, and defensively forced Gladstone into a handful of third-and-longs only to watch it convert and keep drives alive. It’s those things, along with turnovers, that he said is the difference in his team winning and losing.

“We didn’t do a good enough job of getting off the field and giving the ball back to our offense,” Shular said, “and we had two turnovers that were costly considering how close and low scoring of a game it was.”

That doesn’t mean the coach hasn’t liked much of what he’s seen through two weeks, he just knows that in order to flip the script on what’s occurred versus both Gladstone and Centennial a week prior, they need to up their focus and maintain it for four quarters.

“I saw improvement from week one in that we came out much more focused and ready to go to start the game,” Shular said. “We need to sustain that now.”

And will they be ready for their Cowapa League opener versus Tillamook in two weeks? Certainly, but Shular said they’re not concerned with that just yet, for they’ve got Parkrose this week and that’s what has their attention.

“We still have two more games before Tillamook, so we’re not thinking about them at this point,” he said. “We’re focused on this Friday at Parkrose.”

The Lions’ game against Parkrose is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, at Parkrose High School.