In a mere 30 days, Philomath High’s football team will open the season with a trip to Stayton. The Warriors have high hopes for success this fall after an 8-3 campaign in 2024 that saw the team nearly knock off the eventual state runner-up in the quarterfinals.
This coming Monday, Aug. 4, Philomath will start the journey with preseason conditioning practice. Coach Alex Firth said the team will go from 7-9 p.m. weekdays and expressed the hope that the majority of players will choose to participate in the workouts, including the younger kids coming into the program.
Official practices begin Aug. 18 with practices from 6-9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m.-noon on Saturday.
Firth sees an interesting schedule ahead for his ballclub and it all gets started with the Aug. 29 game against the Eagles. Stayton had a respectable 7-4 season last year that included a first-round victory in the 4A playoffs. But the Eagles couldn’t keep pace with Philomath in a 49-14 loss.
Asked to pick out the biggest challenge that Firth sees on the schedule, he immediately pointed to the season opener.
“It’s a Week 0 game so we’re going into it without any sort of live action,” he said. “It’ll be our first test with AJ (Altishin) at quarterback so it will be interesting to see how we play. I mean, obviously, we have a lot of returners at the skill positions and along the offensive line but it’s just AJ getting comfortable in the pocket and running the offense.”
Altishin, a junior who has backed up Caleb Russell for the past two seasons, has played baseball most of this summer but has worked in some time on the gridiron. In June, he played QB in Philomath’s appearance at a 7-on-7 tournament.
“We ended up playing in the semifinals and we lost to the two-time California state champion there so we did pretty good — actually, better than we did last year,” Firth said.
But there will be questions when the real deal arrives in late August. After the Eagles, Philomath will play its home opener on Sept. 5 against Newport. After a bye week, the team plays again at Clemens Field with a Sept. 19 visit from North Bend. Then the team goes on the road three straight weeks with contests at The Dalles (Sept. 26), Crescent Valley (Oct. 3) and Cottage Grove (Oct. 10).
Two of the final three games will be at home for PHS with Oct. 17 vs. Junction City, Oct. 24 at Marist Catholic and Oct. 31 vs. Sweet Home.
Class 4A’s Special District 3 went through some realignment changes with Cascade and Stayton now in another district. Philomath’s “conference” again includes Marist Catholic, Junction City and Sweet Home and welcomes in Crescent Valley, which petitioned down from 5A, and Cottage Grove, which is back in 4A after playing in 3A the past two years.
Firth was also asked to identify two teams on the schedule that will require a specific type of game preparation.
“One is going to be Newport — they run the triple option and that’s not something we see in our conference so we’ll have to prepare for that,” Firth said. “It kind of neutralizes a little bit of what you do defensively because you end up playing ‘assignment football’ to stop the triple. I’m assuming they’re still running that — I don’t think there have been any changes over there.”
Mark Moore appears to be back at head coach with the Cubs, which had a 3-6 campaign in 2024.
“The other one’s going to be Cottage Grove,” Firth said. “They’re a wing-T and they’re getting better at it so having to prepare for that as we change the pace defensively for us.”
Firth said he believes every other team on the schedule will run some sort of pro style or split offense, which means the team will have similar preparations defensively.
After the Stayton and Newport games, Philomath will have that bye week on Sept. 12 before going up against North Bend. Firth is in favor of the bye week.
“North Bend has a really good program and having an extra week to prepare for them is good for us,” Firth said. “And also, if we get banged up at all the first couple of weeks, it gives us a couple of weeks to heal up before we get into the stretch.”
Overall, Firth said he believes the schedule plays a little into Philomath’s favor. There are a couple of tough games early on but a showdown with Marist Catholic doesn’t come up on the schedule until the second-to-last regular-season game.
Firth, who was an assistant coach at Crescent Valley for 18 years, will face the Raiders for the first time as Philomath’s head coach. And the game will be on the Corvallis school’s campus.
“It’s just going to be weird being on the other sideline,” Firth said. “I know a bunch of people on their staff so it’s going to be playing against your friends — I guess that could be good or bad.”
Firth said he has no animosity toward his former school and although he coached with the Raiders for those many years, he’s now a Warrior.
“I’m the Philomath coach and I’m a Philomath guy so we’re going to do what we can to win football games,” he said. “I don’t want to make it into something it’s not — it’s not about me.”
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).
