SPOKANE, Wash. – After a week off, the Whitworth Pirates will return to the gridiron on Saturday to host the Lewis & Clark Pioneers in the Northwest Conference opener for both schools. The game kicks off at 1:00 pm and will be heard live in Spokane on KSBN 1230am and on the internet at KSBN.net. The radio broadcast will begin at 12:45 am (PDT). Local television station SWX will televise the game live in Spokane on channel 6.2 and regionally on other outlets. Rob Jesselson will do play by play while Mike Peterson provides color commentary.
Whitworth (3-0) is ranked 18th in this week's D3football.com poll and 22nd in the AFCA Division III Coaches Poll. The Pirates are coming off a 31-15 victory at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps on September 18th. Lewis & Clark crushed visiting Whittier 66-14 at home on the same day.
The Pirates: Whitworth passed its first road test of the season with a 31-15 win at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps on September 18th. The Pirates built a 31-0 lead early in the third quarter and did not allow the Stags to score until 16 minutes remained in the game.
Whitworth's offense had its best game of the season so far, rolling up 408 total yards and 23 first downs. The Pirates passed for 268 yards and ran for 140 more. The Bucs converted on 50% of their third downs (7 of 14) and held the ball for 31 minutes. Jaedyn Prewitt completed 17 of 28 passes for 200 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. Caleb Christensen also played at QB and completed 6 of 10 throws for 68 yards with a touchdown and one interception. Ethan Peloquin caught six of the passes for 74 yards and two of the touchdowns, while Jerusalem To'oto'o caught four for 50 yards and a score. Solomon Hines ran 15 times for 98 yards and his 50 yard burst set up a TD. Isaiah Jones carried 11 times for 23 yards.
Whitworth's defense came away with three interceptions, giving the Pirates nine picks this season. Whitworth finished with 12 pass breakups. Bryce Hornbeck had a big game with his first interception of the year, seven tackles (including one for loss) and three other breakups. Jacob Hogger grabbed his third pick in as many games, while Parker Shaw nabbed his second. Patrick Serrano led the team with nine tackles and Jaylen Gonzales was in on eight stops.
Nate RaPue was selected as the NWC's Special Teams Student-Athlete of the Week. He made his only field goal attempt from a season-long 39 yards away and converted all four of his PATs. He also averaged 55 yards on six kickoffs, including two touchbacks. Omar Campos-Ontiveros averaged 38 yards per punt. The Pirates averaged better-than 27 yards per kickoff return and seven yards per punt return.
Team Captains: The Pirate team captains in 2021 are Jaedyn Prewitt and Cody Bollig from the offense and Bryce Hornbeck and BJ Mullin from the defense. A special teams captain will be selected on a week-by-week basis. Last week it was Ethan Fields.
Extended Home Slate: Whitworth will play six home games in 2021, two non-conference contests and four Northwest Conference dates. The last time the Pirates had six home games during the regular season was 2018, which is the last time Whitworth won a Northwest Conference title.
Bryce Stands Tall: Despite the fact that he is one of the smaller players on Whitworth's roster, Bryce Hornbeck has come up huge for Whitworth's defense the last two seasons. After he did not get much playing time in his first two years, Hornbeck has owned one corner spot since 2019. He had four interceptions that season and five deflections. He added three interceptions in 2020-21 with four breakups. He has returned an interception for a touchdown each of the last two seasons. He now has eight career interceptions at Whitworth.
The Ironman: Colton Chelin has not missed a start, much less a game, in his Pirate career. The senior cornerback has started every game since stepping on campus for the 2019 season, when he was the Northwest Conference Freshman of the Year. He has seven career interceptions and 19 passes defended in his career.
Prewitt Can Do It: Jaedyn Prewitt, who threw nine passes over the course of his first two seasons, worked his way to becoming Whitworth's starting QB last spring. All he did was complete 62 of 103 passes (60.2%) for 1,074 yards with 11 touchdowns and two interceptions. He established career highs with 458 passing yards, 23 completions, 38 attempts and four touchdowns in the season-ending win over Pacific Lutheran.
Mr. Touchdown: If there was an official statistic for touchdowns per reception, Ethan Peloquin would likely have been a national leader in that category last spring. Half of his 14 receptions went for touchdowns. He had at least one in each of the four games. Four of those touchdown receptions came on either third or fourth down. He leads the team with three touchdown catches in 2021.
The Anchor: Cody Bollig is in his second season as Whitworth's full-time starter at left tackle. He has played in every game of his Pirate career, beginning as a major contributor during his freshman campaign.
Nate Ra-Perfect: Nate RaPue was selected as the "In the Huddle" Division III Special Teams Player of the Year last spring after he made all six of his field goals and all 19 of his extra points. So far in 2021 he is 4-4 in field goals and 5-5 in PATs.
National Rankings: Whitworth made a five-spot move in the D3football.com rankings without even playing a game this week, going from 23rd to 18th. That may be attributed to the fact that Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, the Pirates opponent on September 18th, defeated previously 17th-ranked Chapman 29-21 last Saturday. Whitworth also made its debut in the AFCA Division III Coaches poll at 22nd.
NWC Poll: Whitworth was second in the 2021 NWC preseason coaches poll with 43 points and one first place vote. Linfield (49 points, 7 first place votes) was first and Pacific (Ore.) (35 points) was third. Coaches cannot vote for their own school.
Winning the Opener: Following a season-opening victory over Carnegie Mellon, Whitworth has now won seven of its eight season-openers under head coach Rod Sandberg. The Pirates are 5-1 at home and 2-0 on the road. Whitworth's only season-opening loss under Sandberg was a 50-49 OT setback to Central (Iowa) in 2016. The Pirates defeated the Dutch 56-13 in Pella, Iowa during the season opener the next season.
Looking back at last "season": Whitworth played four games, but only two opponents, in 2020-21 after the season was delayed until February and March because of COVID-19. The Washington members of the Northwest Conference played only each other in all fall and winter sports.
The Pirates opened with a 53-6 win over Puget Sound and beat the Loggers 30-12 in Tacoma in game three. After beating Pacific Lutheran 28-10 on the road in the second game, Whitworth closed the spring with a 56-23 win over the Lutes at home.
Leading the Evergreen State: Since Rod Sandberg took over as Whitworth's head coach in 2014, Whitworth University has the best winning percentage of any football playing university in Washington State. Heading into 2021, the Pirates are 51-14 since 2014, a winning percentage of 78.5. That figure is better than the University of Washington (58-27, .682), Washington State (47-34, .580), Eastern Washington (59-24, .710), Central Washington (45-21, .682), Pacific Lutheran (24-33, .421) and Puget Sound (31-31, .500).
Seven in a Row: With the win at Puget Sound last March, Whitworth clinched its seventh consecutive winning season under head coach Rod Sandberg. That matched the longest streak of winning campaigns in school history, set between 1959 and 1965.
Eight in a Row: Whitworth is currently on an eight-game winning streak that spans three seasons. The Bucs won the final game of the 2019 season and all four games during the 2020-21 Covid-affected schedule. The Pirates' longest winning streak ever (20 games) spanned four seasons, beginning with the final game of the 1953 season, followed by an 8-0 year in 1954, 9-0 in 1955 and then the first two games of 1956.
On the Air Again: Whitworth's games are once again carried live this season on KSBN 1230am in Spokane. The relationship between Pirate athletics and KSBN goes back to 1994, a span of 25 years. Bud Nameck, familiar to listeners in Spokane as the (now retired) longtime host of the KXLY 920am Morning News, is in his eighth season as the voice of the Pirates in 2021. He was the voice of Washington State University men's basketball for 22 years, and spent that same amount of time on the Cougar football broadcasts – the final three on play by play. He is a longtime resident of the Inland Northwest who began his career as the Sports Information Director and radio voice of Gonzaga University basketball and baseball in the 1980s.
Two SWX Broadcasts: Local cable station SWX will carry two of Whitworth's games this season: this week's game against Lewis & Clark and the October 16th contest against Pacific Lutheran. Rob Jesselson will do play by play while Mike Peterson provides color commentary. SWX stands for Sports & Weather Right Now and is owned by local NBC affiliate KHQ channel 6. SWX can be seen both over-the-air and through some cable services in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene, Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, and Yakima viewership areas. In the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area, SWX is found on digital channel 6.2, on Comcast channel 112 in Spokane and Time Warner channel 306 in North Idaho. Click here for a complete list of station numbers throughout the Eastern Washington/North Idaho region.
The Head Coach: In seven seasons Rod Sandberg has entrenched himself in the Whitworth and NCAA record books as the Pirates' head football coach. Sandberg has guided the Pirates to a 51-14 record over that span, including two appearances in the NCAA Division III playoffs (2015 and 2018). He is in second place in total victories in school history and no Pirate coach reached 50 victories as quickly as Sandberg. Sandberg's winning percentage of .785 is the best among Whitworth coaches with at least five seasons and currently ranks among the top 10 active coaches in all of Division III. He coached the Pirates to only the fourth unbeaten regular season in school history (9-0) in 2018 and only the second NCAA playoff victory (48-6 over Claremont-Mudd-Scripps). The Bucs' 15-game winning streak, counting the final five games of 2017 and the first ten of 2018, is the second-longest in school history. Whitworth was 6-4 in 2014, Sandberg's first season, the best first-year record for a Pirate football coach since Rod Enos led the team to a 6-3 mark in 1965. Sandberg spent 19 seasons on the defensive staff at Wheaton College (Ill.), including the last 11 as defensive coordinator. Wheaton made the NCAA Division III playoffs five times during Sandberg's tenure as defensive coordinator. The team never lost a first round playoff game and reached the Division III semifinals in 2008 and quarterfinals in 2003. Sandberg's 2007 and 2013 squads led the Collegiate Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin, regarded as one of the strongest football leagues at the Division III level, in scoring defense. The Thunder were second in the league in scoring defense five other times.
The Pioneers: Lewis & Clark College is 1-1 and also coming off a bye week. The Pioneers opened with a 34-10 loss at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, but led 10-7 at the half. They bounced back by demolishing Whittier 66-14 on September 18th in their home opener. L&C is posting 408 yards of offense per game, while allowing 305 yards per contest and leading the NWC in rushing yards per game (179.5).
Jay Locey, who led Linfield College to a national title in 2004 during his ten seasons as head coach of the Wildcats (1996-2005), is in his seventh year as head coach at L&C. He joined the coaching staff at Oregon State in 2006, where he rose to Associate Head Coach and Chief of Staff.
Sophomore Dyontae Navarrete is the spark to the successful running game. He leads the team with 189 yards on the ground and four rushing touchdowns. Junior Cruz Montana starts at QB and has completed 46% of his passes for 336 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. Jonathan Newsome (Jr., WR) has five catches for 64 yards and Elijah McGee (Jr., WR) has four grabs for 72 yards and a touchdown. Senior defensive back Anakin Mares leads the defense with 14 tackles, one interception and three other passes defended. Senior defensive lineman Ari Blemur has 10 stops and 2.5 tackles for loss, including a sack.
L&C led 31-7 at halftime and never looked back against Whittier on September 18th in a 66-14 victory. The Pioneers rolled up 564 yards and 29 first downs on offense while limiting the Poets to 181 yards and eight first downs. L&C returned a punt and an interception for touchdowns within one minute of each other in the third quarter to completely blow the game open. Navarrete carried 26 times for 163 yards (6.1 per carry) and scored all four of his touchdowns. Montana completed 11 of 22 passes for 156 yards with one touchdown and one interception in only about two and a half quarters of work. Blemur had seven tackles, including all 2.5 of his tackles for loss (11 yards) to lead the defense.
The Series: Whitworth leads the all-time series 37-13 and the Bucs have won 20 of the last 21 contests. The Pioneers' 30-22 win in 2011 is their only victory in that stretch. The Pirates won the last game played in Spokane 38-28 in 2018. Whitworth won the 2006 game 70-3, the largest margin of victory for either team. The biggest margin of victory for Lewis & Clark was 49-26 in 1993. Lewis & Clark won the first-ever meeting between the schools, 19-0 in 1956.
Last Meeting: Whitworth took the ball away seven times and sacked Lewis & Clark quarterbacks eight times in a 68-30 win in Portland in 2019. The Pirates did not commit a turnover and gave up only one sack, allowing them to overcome a season-high 16 penalties.
Lewis & Clark actually outgained Whitworth 505-476 in the game, but the many turnovers allowed the Pirates several short field situations. The Bucs had three one-play scoring drives in the game.
Whitworth scored 35 points in one quarter for the second straight week, opening a 35-12 lead at the end of the first period. Jerusalem To'oto'o caught two touchdowns in the game. Running back Brayden Corona finished with 189 all-purpose yards after running for 42, returning two kickoffs for 57 and catching a 90-yard touchdown pass.
The Pirates posted season-highs for sacks (8) and tackles for loss (14) against the Pioneers. Colten Chelin, Gunnar Swannack and BJ Mullin intercepted passes for the Pirates. Andrew McCoy had two of Whitworth's sacks in the game. The defense gave up 473 passing yards, but limited All-NWC running back Michael Abraham to 38 rushing yards on 16 attempts.
Whitworth made both of its field goal attempts and 7-8 PATs. It was also a key special teams play that gave the Pirates huge momentum in the opening period. Leading 14-6, an L&C player did not field Whitworth's kickoff and Derrick Platt recovered at the Pioneers' one-yard line. The Bucs ran for a touchdown on the next play.
Coming up next: Whitworth will travel to McMinnville, Oregon for a potential match-up of nationally-ranked teams on October 9th when the Pirates battle Linfield University.
