Harley Kirsch lay on his back for about five minutes, his arms sprawled and extended on the Eastside Catholic football team’s practice field.
The senior quarterback, who has thrown for 10,346 yards in four years, only sat up when joined by eight other teammates in what resembled more of a slumber party than the final 30 minutes of football practice on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Crusaders’ No. 1 defense was on the other side of the field, practicing against a wing-T scout offense.
“We were just relaxing and chilling,” said Kirsch, who has verbally committed to play at Cornell University. “We got done with offense and started to wind down, so we were just chatting and having fun.”
He’s earned it. Kirsch is one of 17 Eastside Catholic seniors who have played together and learned the team’s near unstoppable spread offense since junior football.
He will play Friday at the Tacoma Dome in his fourth consecutive 3A state title game — all against Bellevue, including last year’s win that ended the Wolverines’ state-record, 67-game win streak and state-record six consecutive state titles.
Consider that final half-hour Wednesday as the calm before the war. 
“All I want is for our kids to play as hard as they possibly can,” Eastside Catholic coach Jeremy Thielbahr said. “A lot of people say this or that about Bellevue and the wing-T and the spread and how dominant they are, but really what you’ve got to match Bellevue with is intensity on every single play.
“I feel like we did that last year, and for us to do that again this year it’s going to take a monumental effort. It’s just going to be such a competitive, hard-core war.”
The Crusaders bulldozed past three 3A South Puget Sound League teams (Auburn Mountainview, Bonney Lake and Lakes) in this season’s state playoffs. That league was supposed to be one of the best in the state. The Crusaders have outscored opponents by almost 40 points per game.
And this is the only in-state program to turn Bellevue into an underdog, even if Thielbahr doesn’t agree.
The first time Thielbahr played Bellevue was in 2011, his first year as Eastside Catholic’s coach. The Crusaders lost 42-0 in the first round of the state playoffs and Bellevue went on to eventually win its 10th state title.
The teams met again in the state final the following season, and Bellevue won, 35-3. Then again for 2014’s state title, with Bellevue winning, 52-20.
Eastside Catholic then did the improbable, beating Bellevue for last year’s title, 35-13.
Skyline High School is only about a mile away from Eastside Catholic. Skyline was the previous school to beat Bellevue (2011). Eastside Catholic was founded in Bellevue, but moved to Sammamish in 2008.
“We had played (Bellevue) so many times and you lose in the finals — it was nice to win one,” Kirsch said. “Finally, we were able to get one.”
Thielbahr said this is the first year that Eastside Catholic will have sent a player to a Pac-12 school, and it’s got two — wide receiver Matt Laris (California) and linebacker Brandon Wellington (Washington).
Wellington said he started playing in Eastside Catholic’s junior program in the eighth grade from Kent.
“I definitely thought we would be in this position,” Wellington said. “Just from our eighth-grade group we’ve had that determination and want to get to here.”
Not that they’re done.
They still have their annual end-of-season Bellevue battle.
“When you see some of (Bellevue’s) guys and what happened to them, I know they’ve circled this game for a long time,” Theilbahr said. “But our kids have circled this game for a long time. We knew we would be playing them in the state final. There was nobody who was going to beat Bellevue in the state, so we’ve been practicing for them for a long time, and I’m sure they’ve been practicing for us for a long time.”
Except for those final 30 minutes of Wednesday’s practice for Kirsch. That was just an opportunity to relax.
