The results are in: Lummi clinches division title
Blackhawks gain top seed in playoffs with hard-fought 60-38 win at Neah Bay on Halloween.

Ted Edge, wearing a Barack Obama mask, clowns with Jesse Cooper in the locker room before Lummi's game at Neah Bay. Senior wide receiver Gale Jefferson brought the mask with him on the overnight trip. "Got to celebrate Halloween somehow," he said. "Can't go trick or treating."

Rain poured down and fog hung in the foothills and drifted along the coastline at Neah Bay on Halloween. Few cars or trucks passed along the main street, and pedestrians were rarer yet. To say the village appeared deserted would be an overstatement, but not by much. Neah Bay is situated in the farthest northwest corner of Washington state — of the entire Lower 48 for that matter — and is home to the Makah Nation. The last day of October isn't exactly tourist season. By 4 p.m., though, the village began to come to life. A chartered bus carrying the Lummi Blackhawks arrived at the high school, and the Neah Bay players began drifting in. Nine-year-old Shannon Tejano, face painted in Neah Bay's black and red, showed up early with his dog Honey to watch the teams warm up.

Shannon Tejano's Halloween mask is a show of pride for Neah Bay.

Lummi-Neah Bay is a rivalry game, partly because both teams perennially are among the best in the North Division of the Pacific Coast League, but also because of their cultural and family ties. Both the Makah and Lummi tribes are Coast Salish, and it's not uncommon for Makahs and Lummis to be related by blood. Members of the two tribes attended boarding school together in the past or met at various events, and many eventually married. Some people who grew up at Lummi find themselves living at Neah Bay, and vice versa. When the Red Devils play at Lummi and public address announcer Freddie Lane says, "Welcome to our cousins from Neah Bay," he means it in a literal sense.

Both teams entered Friday's game undefeated in league play, and it was Neah Bay's homecoming. The game kicked off at 5:30, smoke from a nearby home's wood stove wafting over the field. The sideline behind the Red Devils' bench was full of fans cheering enthusiastically for Neah Bay to knock off their Lummi cousins, while others sat in the south end zone in their cars. About a dozen or so Lummi fans who'd made the long trip out the peninsula paced behind the Blackhawks' bench.

Captains for Neah Bay and Lummi meet at midfield before Friday's game.

The game was hard-hitting and emotional. Each team scored on its first possession, but Lummi took a 38-18 halftime lead, and it appeared the Blackhawks would roll to an easy win. Neah Bay pulled within 38-24 in the third quarter, executed a successful onside kick and then scored a touchdown and two-point conversion, cutting the Lummi lead to 38-32. The momentum had swung to Neah Bay and the fans were roaring for more. The Blackhawks promptly marched down the field for a score, Dustin Tom running in to put Lummi ahead 46-32 with 1:30 to go in the third quarter. The game never was in doubt again. "I thought Dustin played pretty courageously," coach Jim Sandusky said. "He stuck his head in there and took some shots. He was sacked a few times and thrown down hard." He responded by throwing four touchdown passes and running for four more scores. He completed 33 of 39 passes for 503 yards.

Lummi quarterback Dustin Tom took some punishment against Neah Bay, but he dished out some, too.

The victory assured the Blackhawks the top seed from the North Division (they are 4-0 in the league, 8-1 overall and ranked No. 4 in the state). They will play the fourth-place team from the South Division at 4 p.m. Nov. 15 at Edmonds Stadium. Their opponent likely will be Tahola or Oakville. First, though, Lummi will finish its regular season at 2 p.m. Thursday at home against Lopez. It will be the final home game for Dustin Tom, Lawrence Tom, Kody Dennis, Darryl James, Lonnie James, Gale Jefferson, Ray Jefferson, Nelson Montenegro and Tony Washington (see a photo of the group on SportsShooter.com).

Update:
The time of the Blackhawks' game at Neah Bay has been changed — again. It's now at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31.

Lummi vs. Clallam Bay slideshow

Lummi Nation illumination
Blackhawks make history in beating Clallam Bay 52-30 in first-ever home game played under the lights.

Blackhawk quarterback Dustin Tom rolls out under the glow of portable lights installed for Lummi's homecoming game against Clallam Bay.

The Lummi Blackhawks were feeling it Friday night. Senior wide receiver Ray Jefferson said, "You feel like big shots." Senior lineman Nelson Montenegro said he felt "like I'm in the movies." Senior running back Tony Washington said, "It's a different environment, a different feeling. It's like you're on Mars."

For once, the Blackhawks didn't have to travel to another team's field, let alone to Mars, to play under the lights. For the first time in school history, the lights came to them. Lummi school officials had promised the football players during the offseason they'd be playing at home under the lights this year. Permanent lights were expected to be installed and shining down on the Blackhawks when they played Neah Bay on Sept. 27. A holdup in contract negotiations made it an impossibility for this year, and so the school decided to improvise. Fourteen portable light poles, powered by chugging generators, were rented and set up around the field for Friday night's homecoming game against Clallam Bay.

"It's holding true to our word they would have a Friday night game this year," principal Heather Leighton said. "Playing under the lights is a whole different feeling. We felt it was important for our seniors to experience that. They work hard. They deserve it. They're good kids."

Each pole cost $89 to rent, bringing the total to about $1,300. "I think it was worth it," Leighton said. "I'm a football fanatic, though, so I don't care what it costs. I probably wanted it as much as the players."

The lights, normally used at construction sites, were much lower than those installed at stadiums, and as a result it was a bit tougher for receivers to judge the ball — thus Washington's comment about playing on Mars. Nonetheless, Dustin Tom managed to throw seven touchdown passes, including one to Montenegro, the first scoring reception of his career. "It's huge," Montenegro said of playing under the lights, "because we've been wanting it for a long time."

Blackhawk players, from left, Ty Jameson, Joe Brady and Lonnie James were part of a group that performed a drumming song before Friday's homecoming game.

This Saturday's Lummi-Neah Bay game matches two teams undefeated in the North Division of the Pacific Coast League. The game begins at 4 p.m. at Neah Bay and likely will determine first and second place in the division. The Blackhawks beat the Red Devils 60-36 at home in a nonleague game during the fourth week of the season. The teams that finish first and second in the North Division will face the third and fourth place teams from the South Division in the first weekend of the playoffs, Nov. 14-15.

Lummi vs. Highland slideshow

Take that!
Blackhawks roll past Highland Christian 78-46. Next up: homecoming against Clallam Bay under the lights.

Jeremy Roberts evades a Highland Christian defender Saturday en route to the Blackhawks' first touchdown on a 34-yard pass play.

It's homecoming week at Lummi. Monday is "Fame Day! (Dress up like someone famous)." Tuesday is "Seeing Double (Twin Day)." Wednesday is "Wacky World (Wacky Day: dress weird)." Thursday is "Rival Day (Wear gear from other schools and teams)." And Friday, in addition to being "Blackhawk Pride (School colors & gear)," is Play Under the Lights Night (even if the lights are rented and powered by generators).

Lummi has never played a home game at night, but that is expected to change Friday when the Blackhawks play host to Clallam Bay at 7 p.m. The school has permanent lights on order — conduit already is laid under the track — but a bureaucratic delay prevented them from arriving in time for this season. Last weekend's game against Highland Christian originally was scheduled for Friday night, Oct. 17, but it was moved to the following day. School officials didn't want the same thing to happen for homecoming, and so they have rented portable lights powered by generators. Six stanchions will go up on each side of the field, plus another couple near the grandstand. Coach Jim Sandusky tested them last week and found them to be sufficiently bright. But they are only about 12 feet off the ground, which means receivers might sometimes be looking into them when going for passes; plus, fans will be peering into those set up on the opposite side of the field. Nonetheless, the experiment is expected to go forward.

Dustin Tom awaits the snap Saturday. The senior quarterback has thrown 17 touchdown passes in the past two games.

Dustin Tom was named the WIAA/Seattle Times state athlete of the week in Class 1B after throwing for nine touchdowns against Crescent on Oct. 4. He followed up that performance with eight touchdown tosses Saturday against Highland Christian. According to Dave Rasbach's game story in The Bellingham Herald, the senior quarterback totaled 589 yards through the air. Sandusky praised the offensive line for giving Tom sufficient time to do his thing, and he tried to reward them by involving them in the passing game. He ran plays in which down linemen became tight ends and thus eligible receivers. Sometimes it worked — Garrick Martin and Alex LeClair each hauled in a pass — and sometimes, well... the would-be receivers ran the wrong pattern or dropped the pass. In any case, Sandusky's goal of allowing the linemen to have some fun did succeed.

Offensive lineman Alex LeClair reacts after dropping a pass. He did catch one for an 8-yard gain.

Last week Sandusky stressed the need for the Blackhawks to reassert their hard-hitting, ball-hawking tradition. "I want them to strip the ball, to attack the ball," the coach said. Lummi forced nine fumbles on Saturday, according to Rasbach's statistics, and recovered four of them. The Blackhawks also picked off two passes. "I was pretty proud of them, to come out and do that," Sandusky said.

David James pressures Highland Christian quarterback Vince Kurtzenac.

Sandusky said he doesn't know much about Lummi's homecoming foe, Clallam Bay. The Bruins are 0-2 in Pacific Coast League play and 1-6 overall. They suit up only 14 or 15 players and had to forefeit a game earlier this year when injuries left them with only nine players. Lummi's roster includes about two dozen players, all of whom played against Highland Christian.

Heaven sent
Blackhawks football program is an answer to prayers for many in the Lummi community.

Art Solomon sports his Lummi Blackhawks sweatshirt while watching Jack Horn mend his net. The two were fishing off Lummi Shore Drive earlier this fall.

Ray Jefferson grabs a pass from Dustin Tom and cuts through the opposing defenders, looking for a seam to the end zone. “Go Grandson!” Marie Roberts cries from the sideline. “Go Grandson!” Roberts is a Lummi elder and a fixture at Blackhawk football games. She shouts encouragement to Jefferson, her biological grandson, and to her grandnephews and to the sons of her “winter” daughters — women her own daughter’s age who have boys on the team and to whom she is a mother figure. “I’m not the only elder who sits there,” Roberts says. “I’m just the most vocal.”

To Roberts and many others at Lummi, the Blackhawk football team is a blessing. The games offer a place for the community to gather and celebrate a family-oriented, healthy activity; there’s no alcohol, no drugs, no violence (except for what’s restricted to the playing field). The players showcase the athleticism and skill of Lummi youth — not just to their fans, but also to opponents from the Olympic Peninsula to the Palouse — and they’re role models to the younger tribal members, many of whom idolize them.

“A lot of grandparents, a lot of elders have been praying for this to come into our community, and thank God it has come,” Roberts says. “They have been praying that with some generation the cycle will be broken, and I think we’re heading to that. It’s not going to be fixed in a year, it’s not going to be fixed in maybe 10 years, but maybe the next generation, or the generation after that, the abuse, the dysfunction, the cycle will be broken.”

Marie Roberts weathers the wind and rain at Lopez on Oct. 4 to cheer on the Blackhawks. The Lummi elder rarely misses a game, home or away.

Pauline Hoskins is Marie’s daughter, and senior wide receiver Ray Jefferson is the oldest of her five sons. She graduated from Ferndale High School and for years watched as Lummi boys struggled for playing time on her alma mater’s team (Lummi youth can attend Ferndale schools). It was tough for them to crack the lineup, though, because Ferndale is one of the top high school football programs in the state. “We’d always go to a Ferndale game and maybe see one of our boys in for one play,” she says. “That’s real depressing.” Hoskins points to another barrier Lummi boys confront when they leave the reservation. “Racism is there and I don’t think it will ever die, and that’s a sad thing,” she says. “They live where we live, and we live where they live and there’s still that boundary between the two.”

Lummi High School began playing football in 2002, and Jim Sandusky took over the program the following year, quickly turning it into a state power in the B-8 classification. Hoskins has witnessed the evolution of Blackhawk football over the past few years and expects to be watching much more of it in the future. Son Deion Hoskins plays for the Bellingham Regulators select team and is a rabid Blackhawks fan. All he wanted last week for his 13th birthday was to travel out to the Olympic Peninsula for Lummi’s game against Crescent. His parents reminded him that he would miss his Regulators game and told him he needed to stay home and play. Hank Hoskins, 10, and Stanford Hoskins, 8, are regulars at Blackhawk games, where they can be seen running and tackling each other along the sidelines and on the field at halftime. Paul Jefferson, 16, hasn’t wanted to play in Ray’s shadow but might go out for the team next year after his older brother graduates. “To see the expectation of all the kids — ‘I want to be a Blackhawk’ — it’s made a huge big difference in my boys,” Hoskins says.

Stanford Hoskins, 8, breaks the grasp of brother Hank, 10, while playing their own two-man game on the sideline of Lummi's game against Lopez.

Ray Jefferson (left) turned out for the Ferndale football team as a sophomore but quickly realized he wasn’t going to see much playing time, and he says he grew tired of “kids talking shit about Indians behind my back in the hallways.” He and his parents reached an agreement: He could transfer from Ferndale to Lummi, but only if he would pursue his AA degree while there; that way he would have a better chance of going to college. Today, he is a co-captain of the Blackhawks, a Running Start student and one of Dustin Tom’s favorite targets. “Lummi football is everything to me right now,” he says. “It’s the whole reason I’m in Running Start. The whole reason I’m at Lummi is for sports.” He says he hears his grandmother cheering for him, and he knows that when she shouts “Grandson!” she’s also rooting for his cousins Jeremy and Devin Roberts, and longtime buddies such as Alex, Lumpy, Dustin, Gale and Murphy. “It means a lot to us,” he says. “For me it does, to have my grandmother there. She helped raise me because my father left when I was 1. She always had her home open. She helped raise me and my brother.”

Marie Roberts is the Lummi community cook, preparing meals for funerals, weddings, all kinds of events. She knows just about everyone on the reservation, and is grandmother to many of the boys, whether by blood or in what she terms a “cultural” way. She is 62 years old and a tribal elder, providing advice and information on Lummi culture, history and other issues. She also nurtures those who need it. “I think that’s my biggest role,” she says. “I do a lot of nurturing.” That includes supporting Lummi’s youth. “Our community is in a mode of improving activities with their children,” she explains. “That’s changed even with the basketball, the volleyball team. It’s become not just the children, the parents, the grandparents, it’s the whole community.”

Roberts credits Sandusky for much of the change, and she says she thanks his wife, Tami, every opportunity she gets for sharing him. “I love to encourage ‘Sandman’ because he has brought so much to our community, such a pride to our community,” she says. “He’s such a dedicated man, I just love him.” Sandusky also has injected an element of spirituality into the program, gathering his players together in prayer on the field after each game. Roberts appreciates that, too. “He’s brought God, Jesus, the Creator, that part into our community,” she says. “He has made it acceptable for our young people to pray.” This season the Blackhawks’ opponents have been joining them in the prayer. “It’s like a pebble in the water,” Roberts says. “It has a ripple effect, not just in our community but in other communities.”

Crescent Loggers join Lummi Blackhawks in prayer following their Oct. 11 game.

Sandusky, a veteran of the National Football League and the Canadian Football League, says prayer always has been part of the teams he’s played for, and he says it seemed only natural to introduce it to the Blackhawks. They pray for safety, to play hard and to have fun, and for safe travels home; they end by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. “It’s pretty general,” he says, “but it makes you realize there’s more to the game.” Sandusky talked to the Highland Christian coach before the season opener this year and asked if his team would like to join the Blackhawks in prayer after the game. They did, and when Lummi played Tri-Cities Prep, a Catholic school, the following week some of the Blackhawks invited the Jaguars to join their prayer. “Those guys have done that on their own,” Sandusky says. “That’s one of my most proud things, that they took the initiative to do that.”

Prayers offered by the Blackhawks — such are the moments that are prayers answered for Marie Roberts and many other Lummis. “You know what,” Roberts says, “it’s the most wonderful thing in my lifetime that I’m able to see this.”