Anacortes’s rise to the best 2A football team in the state didn’t come out of nowhere — though it might seem so to the casual observer.
As the final whistle sounded on the team’s 20-10 victory over Tumwater Dec. 7, the Seahawks celebrated with friends and family for winning their second consecutive state title. They wanted to commemorate the moment with the Anacortes community members who had supported them through what — just a few years ago — would have been unthinkable.
For years, the Seahawks were the whipping post of the 2A Northwest Conference. In fact, when they won the school’s first-ever state football title in 2023, they were just five years removed from a winless (0-9) season. It was the fourth time in five seasons the Seahawks had finished dead last in the conference.
That year was also current head coach Justin Portz’s first season as an assistant. When he arrived in Anacortes two years earlier from California in 2016, he went to the school to introduce himself in hopes of getting on the coaching staff.
The first person he met told him, “You came to the wrong town. This is a basketball school, not a football school.”
The guy wasn’t wrong. When Portz joined the staff in 2018, the team began the season with just over 20 players on the varsity roster and ended with 16. That was the winless year.
Lynden coach Blake VanDalen, who won back-to-back state titles in 2021 and 2022, remembers getting a phone call from Portz introducing himself.
“[Portz] said, ‘I’m new to the area, you guys are the standard and we’d love to be you guys someday. Mind if I ask you a few questions?’” VanDalen said. “That was the first sign Anacortes was going to be good.
“You can know how to build culture and how to build a program, but you better have the dudes to do it,” VanDalen continued. “[Portz] built with the expectation in mind and they recruited to the weight room. They had the athletes, they just didn’t have the guy to put it all together. That’s what coach Portz provided.”
The entire program had to be rebuilt, and that’s exactly what Portz and the coaching staff did. They instituted an off-season weightlifting program — something all the top teams in the state have — and organized team activities to help build camaraderie.
A group of 10 weightlifters soon turned to 15, to 20 and eventually building to 70 to 80. Still, there was a lot of work to do.
Anacortes decided to run a junior varsity-only team in 2019, as the squad just wasn’t competitive enough for 2A varsity squads. The team went 7-2 playing JV opponents, then turned to an independent schedule in 2020, going 3-3.
Players began recruiting kids in the hallways at school — even at baseball games.
When Portz took over as head coach in 2021, Anacortes played one final independent schedule, going 9-1 and playing mostly 3A teams they’d never heard of.
The next season in 2022, Anacortes (8-0) nearly upset perennial power and defending state champion Lynden (8-0) in a 23-13 loss in which they led 13-7 at the half.
The Lions went on to win their second straight state title, and Anacortes lost, 10-7, to North Kitsap in the state quarterfinals.
In 2023, Anacortes finally felled the giant, handing Lynden its first loss to a Class 2A team since 2019 with a 15-8 victory. Later that year, the Seahawks would blow past another powerhouse program, defeating Tumwater 60-30 to claim their first-ever state title.
Even after that, the Seahawks were not considered the favorites heading into last weekend’s state title rematch with Tumwater.
“To defeat Tumwater, we need perfection,” Portz said prior to the game.
Anacortes had suffered a 34-28 loss to conference rival Archbishop Murphy Oct. 11. The Thunderbirds, meanwhile, had beaten — and even blown out in some cases — 4A schools during their march back to the title game, including Puyallup (56-6), Eastlake (38-27) and Union (56-10).
“Last year, I was excited to be here and we were the underdogs,” Portz said. “This year, we were the champs and we felt disrespected.”
Tacoma News Tribune picked Tumwater by 10 points, CDN picked Tumwater by seven points and SBLive WA picked the Thunderbirds by five points.
“Nobody picked us to win or thought we had a chance,” Portz said. “The disrespect across the state was Tumwater was going to run all over us. We took that personally and these guys were pissed off.”
And the Seahawks pulled it all off despite dealing with somewhat of a coaching carousel.
Portz was hired as the school’s athletics director ahead of the 2023 season and was forced to give up head coaching duties. He passed the reins over to then-assistant Travis Anderson while moving himself to an assistant.
Anderson and Portz did not want to disrupt the rhythm of progression by changing coaches again. So when Anderson decided to step down a few days after the 2023 state title game to move closer to family, Portz became head coach once again.
“Travis was an instrumental piece to rebuilding this program and he left Anacortes football better than he found it,” Portz said. “I continued coaching and we just kept things rolling.”
The Seahawks also dealt with several injuries to a roster of only 43 players, including to sophomore quarterback Ryan Harrington, who missed three games at the end of the regular season.
Wide receiver Brady Beaner stepped up at QB and helped the Seahawks to three straight blowout wins. Brady (WR/S) and twin brother Brock (RB/S) are the glue of the team. Both are 3-star prospects, according to 247Sports, and both are committed to the University of Montana.
In the defensive-minded state title game, Brady had five rushes for 11 yards and three receptions for 27 yards, while Brock finished with seven carries for 65 yards and a touchdown.
“It was tough this year,” Brock said. “We were counted out just like last year. People were in my comments with Tumwater buzz and somebody said they were 28-point favorites.”
Although people across the state doubted the Seahawks, the Anacortes community once again rallied around the boys, donning purple and white as they came in droves to Husky Stadium, taking over nearly three entire sections.
Anacortes’ defense shut down Tumwater’s powerful Wing-T offense. The Seahawks forced four fumbles on the day, including two turnovers in the final six minutes to secure the win.
“We stayed disciplined and stopped Tumwater,” senior defensive lineman Elias “Eazy” Quintino said. “It was an unstoppable force against an immovable object, and the object wins every time.”
Eric Trent, Nick Zeller-Singh and Connor J. Benintendi contributed to this report.
