Prosser thankful to be taking short road

YAKIMA — Prosser’s road to the state championship game in Tacoma has gotten a lot shorter this year.

Several hundred miles shorter.

The Mustangs find themselves on the bottom half of the Class 2A state playoff bracket. And it’s good to be on bottom — it means they’re the host.

Gone is a quarterfinal trip likely somewhere along the I-5 corridor followed by a semifinal in the Tacoma Dome a day or two after Thanksgiving.

Those lengthy trips have been replaced with a relative hop, skip and jump to Kennewick’s Lampson Stadium on Saturday for a quarterfinal against Othello at 1 p.m. If Prosser beats the Huskies for a second time this season, another date at Lampson or another Tri-Cities stadium is in order.

“We’re just glad to be playing in Kennewick,” said Prosser coach Tom Moore, whose team last season traveled to Everett for a quarterfinal, then returned to the westside the following week for a semifinal in the Tacoma Dome.

“That was really hard (last year). It took us 45 minutes to get to Lampson today.”

The defending champions aren’t only familiar with their surroundings for a second straight week but also their opponents. After dispatching Selah 53-14 last Friday at Art Fiker Stadium, Prosser is paired with another of its CWAC brethren.

And, like last week, it’s an opponent the Mustangs soundly handled in the regular season. Prosser rolled to a 54-21 victory Sept. 19 at Othello with Jordan Durbin throwing for five touchdowns and Dylan Bolt running for three more.

Don’t expect the Mustangs, who Moore said are the healthiest they’ve been all season, to rest on past results, though.

They certainly didn’t against the Vikings. After being held to a season-low 33 points by Selah just three weeks earlier, the Mustangs surpassed that total with a 34-point first half last week.

“Our kids are just very excited to get the regular season over with and get into the playoffs,” Moore said.

While the Mustangs are staying close to home, the area’s other remaining playoff team isn’t as lucky.

White Swan, which beat Garfield-Palouse last Friday for the first playoff win in the program’s history, plays second-ranked Asotin in a Class 2B quarterfinal in Clarkston at 7 tonight.

The ninth-ranked Cougars will leave late this morning for the more than 200-mile trip to the southeast corner of the state.

“It’s kinda uncharted territory for White Sawn,” Cougars coach Andy Bush said.

It’s hardly new ground for the Panthers. Champions in 2006 and semifinalists last season, Asotin is the favorite to win the title again this season.

“I told them the No. 1 thing is to go in and have some fun, they’ve already exceeded everyone’s expectations,” Bush said. “I asked them to challenge themselves; for us to beat them, we need someone to be a hero.”