PASCO, Wash. — A year ago, Sageview football was simply trying to survive its first varsity season. There were no seniors. Players had been pulled together from different schools. Coaches were learning one another. Relationships that usually take years to establish were being compressed into months.
The result was predictable, even if it was painful: an 0–9 inaugural season.
Five games into Year Two, Sageview is 4–1, owns the Mid-Columbia Conference’s most productive offense and has quickly gone from a young program taking its lumps to one opponents have to seriously prepare for. For head coach Don Hogue, the turnaround may look sudden from the outside. Inside the program, it feels more like the result of finally having time to build.
“Last year was something we had to go through,” Hogue said on The Sports Council. “Everybody was a transfer. Everybody was new. Most of the players didn’t really know most of the coaches.”
Hogue knew some of those growing pains were coming. He had experienced the challenge of opening a new school before, helping launch Chiawana’s football program in 2009 after previously coaching at Pasco.
But Sageview presented a different challenge. When Chiawana opened, Hogue and much of the coaching staff already had years of relationships with one another and with many of the players coming from Pasco. At Sageview, many of those connections had to be created from scratch.
“Trying to compress all of that into a few months was kind of impossible,” Hogue said.
A year later, those relationships are beginning to show on the field. Through five games, Sageview leads the MCC with 439.2 yards and 40.8 points per game. The Lobos are averaging a conference-best 325 passing yards per game, while converting 55.36% of their third downs and 76.92% of their fourth downs.
Much of the offensive transformation starts with junior quarterback Alex Flores. Hogue called quarterback development the program’s “number one priority,” and Sageview invested heavily in Flores throughout the offseason.
“He was the heart and soul of things,” Hogue said. “He stuck with it when things were really bad last year, and he had every reason to fold and quit and cry and pout, and he didn’t do any of those things.”
Through Week 5, Flores has completed 122 of 204 passes for 1,705 yards, 23 touchdowns and five interceptions. He leads the conference in passing yards and touchdowns. Flores credits much of the difference to confidence.
“Last year, I feel like the whole season, honestly, we just didn’t click on offense,” Flores said on The Sports Council. “We didn’t have belief, if I’m being honest, and we didn’t have confidence in each other.”
That changed during a full offseason together. It also changed with the arrival of former Moses Lake head coach Brett Jay, who joined Hogue’s staff and installed an Air Raid-based offense. For Flores, learning the new system required patience.
“It took a while to adjust,” Flores said. “All summer, even in the spring when he got there, it was a lot of learning, a lot of understanding that we’re going to make mistakes.”
The results have been difficult to miss. Receiver Jaysen Beasley leads the MCC with 740 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns on 36 catches, averaging 20.6 yards per reception. Running back Eli Henderson has become a dual threat with 376 rushing yards and five rushing touchdowns, along with 315 receiving yards and seven more scores.
Henderson leads the conference with 902 all-purpose yards, while Beasley ranks fourth with 740. They are also first and second in MCC scoring, with Beasley accounting for 84 points and Henderson 72. But Flores does not want the offense defined by only two or three names.
“At this point, I’m just trying to learn how to make sure to get everyone involved,” Flores said. “I don’t want to get only one person involved. I want to make sure everyone’s getting the ball.”
Henderson said the chemistry simply was not there during Sageview’s first season. Players had come from different schools and still carried pieces of their old identities with them. Then came a long offseason filled with practices, workouts, team dinners and time together away from football.
“We didn’t really click,” Henderson said. “We didn’t really hang out like that. I feel like we just started clicking on those little things, and just being together outside of school changed a lot.”
They stopped being former Bulldogs or former Riverhawks. They became Lobos. Hogue said that identity has been shaped, in part, by everything the program endured during its inaugural season.
“We’re born in the fire,” Hogue said. “There’s a little bit of a chip on our shoulder and competitive desire to show people what Sageview is all about.”
His goal, however, extends beyond producing one successful season. Hogue spent decades in established programs at Pasco and Chiawana before choosing the challenge of starting again at Sageview.
“I’m at the twilight of my career,” Hogue said. “I’d just like to build a program that people are proud of and a sustaining one, and that we build things the right way.”
Sageview opened the season 4–0 before suffering its first loss Friday against Kennewick, 42–35. Hogue said the Lobos were on the verge of building a 28–7 advantage before an interception helped swing the momentum of the game. Sageview never fully got it back. The loss provided a reminder that improvement and arrival are two different things.
“When momentum swings like that and you’re not able to pry that back onto your side, that’s a hard thing to take coaching,” Hogue said. “A lot of coaching responsibility goes into those things.”
For Flores, losing after four straight wins was another step in the program’s education.
“Nobody’s going to be on top forever,” Flores said. “You have to take the losses to get to the top.”
Henderson’s takeaway was even simpler.
“Just get back up,” he said.
That response fits the identity Sageview is trying to establish. The Lobos now enter a critical stretch of the schedule beginning with Walla Walla, followed by Southridge. Hogue described Walla Walla as greatly improved and particularly dangerous at the skill positions, while calling Southridge perhaps “the team to beat” in the conference.
Sageview will look to bounce back Friday at 7 p.m. against Walla Walla at Wa-Hi Stadium.
