By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
North Kitsap got off to a rocky start to the 2013 football season when it dropped a one-pointer to Archbishop Murphy and then was blasted 58-0 by Bishop Blanchet, one of the state’s top 3A schools.
But the Vikings bounced back to win its next seven games and win the regular season Olympic League 2A championship and advance to the first round of the post-season where on Friday at 7 p.m. it will host Orting (6-3), the No 4 seeded team from the South Puget Sound 2A League.
Part of the reason for that Viking roll is the play of junior running back Kyle North. The six-foot (and half-inch) and 185-pound North is one of West Sound’s top rushers this season. He has run for 907 yards on 136 carries, for 6.7 yards per carry average.
“He’s been steady for us,” says North Kitsap coach Jeff Weible. “He’ll get up to 1,000 yards when everything is said and done.”
There have been 78 1,000-yard rushers in high school football in West Sound since 1948 when North Kitsap’s Tom Mariner broke the century mark with 1,596 yards. South Kitsap’s Ryan Cole leads the way with the 2,357 yards he scampered for in 2001 and Kingston’s Travis Schriner sits at 78 with 1,000 yards on the button.
So for North to zero in on 1,000 yards is quite an accomplishment, and one that sparked the Vikings to turn around their season.
Followers of high school football, though, really should have foresaw North Kitsap’s rise to the OL top and North’s ability to help the Viking cause if they had known about the summer trip the team took to the Central Washington football camp. North Kitsap did so well among the 2A teams there that the Vikings were moved up to compete against the 4A schools and still they did well.
All of his really started when Weible first saw North as an eight-grader at Poulsbo Middle School, and immediately liked what he saw.
“There was nothing spectacular about him, but he ran hard,” Weible said. “He was always falling forward and getting positive yards, and he made people miss.”
That ability to make people miss is one of North’s best running attributes. It has enabled him to score 11 touchdowns this season.
“He’s very good at making people miss,” says Weible. “He’s got pretty good feet. He doesn’t have great speed, but kind of has deceptive speed. When he gets going in the open field he’s got a pretty good nose for the end zone.”
Kyle North
North has an uncanny ability to spot holes, and uses his blocks well to spring into the open.
“I read my linemen’s blocks, and my lead blocker and if I can get a good cut off their blocks then I get a successful run,” says North. “Being able to read your blocks is very important. Then when I get into open space I take it as far as possible.”
North, who has been playing football for six years and was on the PoulsboMiddle School team that went undefeated and won the West Sound Middle School League championship when he was in the eighth grade was nicknamed “The Workhorse” by then coach Eric Milyard.
Weible, though, says he has another name now.
“We call him Justin Beiber,” Weible says. “He kind of has that Justin Beiber hairdo and he kind of looks like him a little bit.”
Weible also says North is more of a doer than a talker.
“He’s very quiet,” Weible says. “If you didn’t ask him a question you would never hear from him.”
It would be a pun intended if we said North mows over people, because he does mow. He and Alex Allbee, the Viking’s backup quarterback, have a lawn mowing business called Albert’s Lawn care. It started as a partnership with a third friend, George Calbert, who has since moved to Japan.
“We started the lawn care business two years ago,” says North, son of Ed and Bonnie North. “We wanted to find a way to make money over the summer and mowing lawns was a great business for us.”
It’s been such a good business that both Allbee and North have been able to purchase cars.
“We have 15 to 20 regular people we put on a calendar and come back every two or three weeks,” says North.
The two friends usually start up at the beginning of May and go until football season opens in mid-August. They have thought about doing some work during the winter, but haven’t made a final decision on that.
“We are going to do it again this (coming) summer for sure,” says North, although that may be it.
“I’m definitely going to college,” North says. “I don’t think I want to be mowing lawns all the rest of my life.”
North has a 3.15 grade-point average that he is intent on raising before graduation in 2015, and he hopes that will be good enough to get him into a college. Right now he leans toward WashingtonState and the University of Oregon.
If there is a chance, he might walk-on and attempt to play football in college. But for now he is focused on helping the Vikings advance in the post-season.
Just in case things go wrong for the Vikings and North in his postseason, there is another North waiting in the wings. Nolan is in the 7th grade at PoulsboMiddle School where he played on the junior varsity as a running back.
“He is a little bit shorter than I was at that age, but he is faster,” says big brother.