Olympia's looking to finish out strong after its bye week

Everyone needs a vacation. 

It’s a time of relaxation and a chance to step back from the worries and stressors during an individual’s daily life. It’s a small break, and sometimes, that week off is exactly what someone needs to come back to work refreshed and with a new attitude. 

That’s exactly what Olympia’s football team is hopeful it did during its bye week. 

Two years after winning districts, Olympia High School’s football team now holds a 1-5 record. This year hasn’t gone the way the Titans expected. Head coach Travis Gabriel attributes the record to mental mistakes throughout the season, and so now, he is emphasizing learning and eliminating the errors to finish the season strong.

“The beauty about football is when you make mistakes, when you fall short, you have the opportunity to get up and try to make the best of it and make it better the next time,” Gabriel said.

That’s what he’s trying to instill in his players. He acknowledged the season hasn’t been what the Titans thought it would be in the beginning, but the “silver lining” is the young men can grow from it. 

“Football teaches you so much about life,” Gabriel said. “When you fall down, you get back up. Same way with football. You get knocked down, you get back up. Turn over the football? You get the football back.”

Everything in football is about how you can do better next time. Everyone is going to make mistakes, but Gabriel’s emphasis is what the players do with that. They can’t continue to do the same thing over and over and hope for the same result. 

That would be insanity.

After falling short against Dr. Phillips, Olympia entered its bye week at a pivotal point in the season with four games left to play. 

It’s a time to reset the players’ and coaches’ minds. Gabriel told his players to step away from football over the weekend. 

“Just enjoy your family, play video games, hang out with your friends,” he said. “Just get away from football and then Monday, we come back ready to go.” 

The week off allowed the players to rest their bodies, refocus and focus on what they’ve done and haven’t done this season. 

“It’s just a time to recuperate with my team, we focus on the little things,” Olympia’s safety Ryder Flynn said. “We did have a major injury with Colton (Showely). That’s a big loss, so we have to fill that gap and little things that have been causing us to lose.” 

Middle linebacker Showely tore both his PCL and MCL during the game against DP.  He’s out for the season and scheduled for surgery in October. 

Gabriel said Showely is one of Olympia’s better defensive players and losing him was a “big blow for the whole team.” His injury will impact Olympia both on and off the field. He has a great and irreplaceable character during practices and game days.

Flynn has stepped up and guided the team on how to navigate without Showely. 

“Ryder took the role of, ‘Hey, we can’t replace him, but everybody can come together to do some of the things that he’s done,’” Gabriel said. 

He said Flynn always has been an amazing young man, but he’s grown in his four years of varsity football. 

“As I grew in my years, I became more vocal and got more accustomed to what we do around here,” Flynn said. “My freshman and sophomore year — we had great leaders on the team that I learned from. … They all set the ground work on what I believe in right now and what I want to do.” 

Flynn said he could be more vocal on the field, but he enjoys leading the team by example. He played a role in Olympia’s district run two years ago and remembers how great the feeling was to accomplish a goal they had wanted to achieve. 

As a senior, Flynn knows his time playing for Olympia almost is exhausted. 

“We had a bad start so I just want to have an ending that I’m happy with,” he said. “My senior year is my last year so I want to be able to look back on it proud about the wins, but we just have to play.” 

Gabriel said Flynn is the first and last player on the practice field.

“He has been the most consistent one where every practice, every meeting, every game, he wants to get better and he’s getting better,” Gabriel said. 

As the team heads into its final stretch of the season, Gabriel wants to see from other players more of that mindset: consistency and approach.

Courtesy photo

ADJUSTING THE APPROACH

The night before every game, Flynn focuses on the mission in the next day. He reflects on what he has to do to play his part and approaches it with a positive mindset. 

Gabriel wants the players to clear their minds, and anything they thought they could have done better individually or as a group, strive to do it in the next four weeks. 

Gabriel said he can predict the outcome of the game based on how the team practices during the week. If they missed certain parts during practice, the same mistakes are made in the game. 

Two of Olympia’s five losses this year were winnable. Gabriel said if they worked on finishing, then it would’ve been two more wins on its record. 

“If we’re not finishing drills, if we’re not finishing different things in practice, it results in us not finishing the game,” he said.  

Olympia’s one win this season came against Timber Creek. The Titans defeated the Wolves 14-7 and the difference was the team’s mindset to play all four quarters. 

“Our attitude,” Flynn said. “There were moments of the game where I didn’t know which way it was going to go but everybody on the sideline was uplifting.” 

Against Timber Creek, Olympia continued to fight and persevere. 

When Olympia played Horizon, the team was up by 11 with four minutes left in the fourth quarter, but mistakes and turnovers skyrocketed. The same story wrote itself when Olympia played Lake Nona. 

The coaches are working on teaching the players how to finish and emphasize that when they play their best, it flips the script during games. Now, the opponent has to beat them. 

“The thing I tell the guys is there’s a difference between being beat and losing a game,” Gabriel said. 

He believes when Olympia’s players flip their mindsets to focus on opponents actually having to beat them, then they won’t lose any more games. 

“If a team beats us, I tell my boys to walk out with your head held high, because that team played harder,” he said.

Throughout the season, there’s been many walks to the locker room or bus rides back where the air is full of regrets. Gabriel wants to emphasize that players can’t have regrets. There’s no going back in time to do it all over again. 

It’s learning from those mistakes and approaching the next one with a new level of intensity. 

Playing Celebration brings Olympia its second district game of the season. Olympia might have a winning record between the program’s matchup history, but Gabriel doesn’t want his players to take that into account. The team needs to approach the game individually and with a purpose. 

“They have four more (games) left,” Gabriel said. “If they compete  (in) these four, we’ll be fine.”