Wildcats show resilience, and now they’re at playoffs’ doorstep
Junior running back Heath Thompson is a “state 6A Player of the Year type,” Coach Dan Weaver says (courtesy Mari Thompson)
BEAVERTON — It was a rough night for the Westview Wildcats last Friday at Mountainside High.
A victory would have thrust the Wildcats into a three-way tie for the Metro League lead with one round of regular-season play remaining. The Mavericks blunted that hope with a 55-20 thrashing of the visitors.
In his post-game talk with players, first-year Dan Weaver focused on the positives: A victory for the Wildcats (3-5 overall, 2-2 in Metro play) in this Friday’s Homecoming tilt with 1-7 Southridge assures the Wildcats of one of league’s three automatic berths in the 6A playoffs.
“That is what we talked about in our coaching meeting today,” Weaver told me Sunday night. “From our perspective, we begin the playoffs (Friday against Southridge). We need to have the mentality, ‘Lose and we’re done.’ If we keep winning, we get to keep playing.
“You never know when football is going to end for you. You want to get in the extra practices. You want to get another game. You never know what might happen.”
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To even be talking about playoffs seems a win for the Wildcats, who this past summer found themselves without a coach with the resignation of Jamal Jones.
Jones, who took Westview to a 2-7 record in his first season as coach in 2023, faces 12 misdemeanor counts of harassment following an incident at Linfield’s overnight summer camp on June 25.
After a night out in which he told McMinnville police that he consumed four 16-ounce beers, according to a probable cause affidavit, Jones returned to the Linfield dorm where the team was staying. At about 1 a.m., he allegedly pointed his cellphone flashlight into the faces of several players, shook and slapped them awake and, according to one player, pinned an incoming freshman down with a knee while slapping him.
After a call from one of the players’ mother, police officers arrived at about 4:30 a.m. to investigate. According to their report, Jones denied slapping or striking any of the players, saying he had been “tapping” their faces to “lighten the mood.” He said he and the other coaches “had to get tough on them.”
Three days later, Jones resigned as coach and was also placed on administrative leave from his position as an officer with the Hillsboro Police Department. In early July, he was arraigned in Yamhill County Circuit Court on misdemeanor harassment for “offensive physical contact” with 12 of his players.
In late August, a lawsuit was filed against the Beaverton School District by an attorney working for the parents of one of the players. The suit claims the district ignored “several red flags” about Jones, stating that he posed an “emotional and physical” threat to his players.
No date has yet been set for the trial. A judgment could reap a maximum of $125,000, says attorney Mike Fuller, who filed the action.
“If Mr. Jones was going to be employed, he should have been supervised, not alone with students where he could secretly conceal alcohol on school trips,” Fuller tells me. “Plenty of parents have come through to say (to school administrators), ‘We gave you warnings about this guy.’
“Whether or not he should have lost his job is hard to say, but certainly (administrators) knew he had a history of being inappropriate with students.”
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Dan Weaver took over as coach only weeks before August training camp began but has Westview in state playoff contention (courtesy Mari Thompson)
In late July, about a month after the Linfield incident, Dan Weaver was named as interim head coach. Weaver is a well-known figure in the Westview community. He and wife Sammie have helped run the Westview Youth Football Association the past two years. Sammie is expected to succeed her husband as president of the program next season. Their son Owen is a quarterback and defensive end for the eighth-grade team this year.
Weaver was a three-year starting center at Oregon, playing for the Ducks from 2000-03. Older brother Jed was a standout tight end for them who went on to play six seasons in the NFL. Dan was a two-time winner of the Ed Moshofsky Award as Oregon’s top offensive lineman and a three-time member of the Pac-10 first All-Academic team.
Jones’ resignation put Westview football in a bind. The state’s 6A programs generally get a start on a season during the previous spring and crank into full gear in the summer. Athletic director Troy Christiansen, knowing the Wildcats were under the gun to make a decision, turned to Weaver, who had never coached at the high school level. He was willing to take on the challenge, but knew he would be playing catch-up.
“It was really difficult,” says Weaver, who oversees the trucking logistics for Hampton Lumber in Beaverton. “We have talked a lot about focusing on what we have control over. My goal was to be as transparent and genuine with the kids as I could.
“I was lucky enough to have been involved with the youth program, so I knew the freshmen and sophomores pretty well. I have a pretty good football resume, and I am a student of the game — it’s not like I am just some big athlete who played football. I have close ties with the community. With the circumstances surrounding the availability of the position, it put me in a unique situation to have the community’s support and also have a legitimate resume to step into (coaching) a 6A program.”
Jones had replaced most of the assistant coaches from his first season at Westview. With one exception, Weaver retained the assistants, including offensive coordinator Kasey Closs, the former Portland State receiver who made it to the final cut in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ training camp in 2015. Albert Dexter serves as defensive coordinator and Dupree Stubblefield, Isaiah Walton, Joe Rubio, Joe Whitworth, Wes Adams and Tristan Flint round out the staff.
“With all the criticisms you can have for the previous guy (Jones), he did a good job of turning over his staff and have some really good coaches come in,” Weaver says. “Kasey has NFL experience. Albert has been at Westview for over a decade and does an excellent job. The best part is, the staff cares about the kids more than winning games. When you have that, the wins come on their own.”
The Wildcats have “only five or six contributing seniors,” says Weaver, so they are young.
“We have had our ups and downs,” Weaver says. “We knew we weren’t going to be a deep, experienced type of team. We knew there would be some struggles associated with that. We have had some injuries that have lagged on and been an issue. But I am proud of the kids, who have stepped up and had that next-man-up mantra. I am excited for what they have accomplished.”
The players could have been flummoxed. They didn’t get a new coach until a couple of weeks before August camp began.
“It was so brutal,” says sophomore quarterback Hank Whitworth, Joe’s son. “Everything bad that could happen this summer happened. We lost a couple of key players to the high school transfer portal. It’s hard losing your coach. Everything is weird, and you lose two or three weeks of practice. It’s not what you want to have happen. It delays everything, especially in a growing year, a rebuild year. But once we got the (new) coach in, we moved forward and grew together as a team.”
“What happened (with Jones) was really tough on some of the guys,” senior tight end Payton Reed says. “For me, it was pretty hard. But as a group, we battle through when times are tough. And Coach Weaver has helped a lot with that. He has brought great energy. That’s something the last coach didn’t do as well. That is something that is really cool.”
Senior tight end Payton Reed says he “wants to keep playing” beyond Friday’s regular-season finale against Southridge (courtesy Mari Thompson)
Closs has been impressed with how resilient the players have been.
“The kids were affected by it, they were stunned, but they moved on,” he says. “All they wanted to do was just play football. That incident bonded them and brought them closer together.”
After five games, Westview was 1-4, with only a 38-22 decision over 5A McKay on the winning side of the ledger. Then the Wildcats beat Sunset 35-28 in overtime and drubbed Beaverton 28-6 to put themselves in position for a playoff run.
The top player is running back/linebacker Heath Thompson, a 6-1, 205-pound junior who suffered a broken hand in the second quarter against Mountainside. His availability for the rest of the season is in question.
“You couldn’t ask for a better kid, a better person to have in the program than Heath,” Weaver says. “He is amazing all the way around. (The injury) is frustrating for him. He was poised to have a huge season. I think he is an Oregon Player of the Year type if he is healthy. We didn’t face anybody I was more impressed with than Heath this season.”
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The Wildcats have already won more games this season than last. Hank Whitworth — who had ACL knee surgery last week and is lost for the season — gives his coaches plenty of credit.
“Kasey has done a great job as O-coordinator,” he says. “It’s hard learning a new offense — our third one in two years — but he made it easy on us. He coached us. He sped it up when we needed to and he slowed it down when things got too complicated. We repped it and finally got it running like a well-oiled machine.
“Coach Weaver is a great guy. We love him as a coach. He is a great mentor to a lot of the kids who don’t have someone in their life. He has built a culture already of doing things the right way. You don’t get off scot-free if you do something wrong. You treat your teammates right. There is no funny business now. I guarantee you, he is going to bring championships to this school in the years to come.”
Closs gives Weaver credit for adapting quickly.
“Dan is growing into a coach and learning on the fly — drinking out of a fire hose, so to speak,” Closs says. “As a leader of men and manager of the program, he is doing a very good job. Our team is a work in progress. Every week it is something new.”
Weaver believes his players have handled the situation “about as well as they could have.”
“I have seen a lot of buy-in from the kids,” he says. “On the first day I came in to introduce myself, one kid was sitting in the furthest seat over from the front row. At a meeting about 10 days later, he was second row, right in the middle.
“That was a good representation of what we have seen from the players. They still have a ways to go. The program is in an evolution. But I have been super impressed with what they’ve been able to do.”
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With a win over Southridge, the Wildcats assure themselves of a place in the playoffs. They are No. 23 in the OSAA RPI rankings, behind No. 10 Mountainside and No. 15 Jesuit but just ahead of No. 24 Sunset. Even if the Wildcats lose, they could gain one of six at-large berths in the 16-team secondary 6A bracket. Reed hopes it doesn’t come to that.
“We need to win (against Southridge),” he says. “I want to keep playing. These are my best friends I am playing with. We don’t want it to end.”
The future for the Westview program looks bright, Weaver says.
“We have grown the youth program more than 50 percent over the last two years,” he says. “We are hoping we see that continue. We are excited about all the classes coming into our (high school) program next year. We will be in good shape if we can keep all the kids together and they get better like they should.”
And unlike last season, the head coach will return.
“I am in it for the long haul, not just to fill in the gap,” Weaver says. “My plan is to be around for a long time.”
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