Prep Football Notebook | Bay Area team tackles Wolverines Saturday

At Qwest Field, they ended The Streak and they plowed through the powerhouse.

Two of the Bellevue Wolverines' most notable football performances were played out in front of a combined 30,000 fans at Qwest, where Bellevue rolled over California high-school powers De La Salle and Long Beach Poly.

Another California team is on its way to Seattle to face the Wolverines — California High School of San Ramon, ranked eighth in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Chronicle.

"If you can't get excited to play at Qwest Field," Bellevue coach Butch Goncharoff said, "then you shouldn't be playing football."

Bellevue, ranked No. 1 in the state in Class 3A after back-to-back blowout wins, plays California at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday. But unlike its game against Poly in 2005, Bellevue's game is not the only one on the ticket. The four-game event begins with Kamiak playing Shorecrest at 10:30 a.m. Woodinville, ranked seventh in 4A, plays Eastlake at 1:30 p.m., and Bothell plays Redmond at 4:30.

"If we were going to rent the field for the entire day, we thought putting together the amount of teams we've put together made sense," said Joe Razore, a director for the Bellevue booster club. "The teams that are playing have a pretty strong backing."

California High School won't carry the same reputation as De La Salle or Long Beach Poly. Before coach Tony Sanchez took over more than three years ago, the school's record was 83-200-10. But the Grizzlies went 8-3 in his first year, 5-5 his second and 11-2 last season, the best in school history.

"We didn't want to play a team that wouldn't be a challenge for us," Razore said. "Cal-High is a relatively new name, but they're definitely up there now."

California could be without its top two rushers, who left last week's win with injuries, but a bigger concern has to be how to stop Bellevue's wing-T offense. The Wolverines have run for 769 yards in two games. California played two games against wing-T teams last season.

"I'll tell you what, we haven't seen anybody run it like Bellevue," Sanchez said. "They pretty much wrote the book on it."

Holden returns to Newport

Dan Holden, who coached Newport to the 1992 Class 4A (then AAA) state championship, has returned to the Bellevue school as linebackers coach.

Holden was head coach at 1A Cedar Park Christian of Bothell the past two seasons. He also taught biology at Cedar Park but has retired from teaching after 39 years in the classroom.

Newport's head coach, Mike Miller, was an assistant under Holden at Newport.

Times staff reporter Craig Smith contributed to this report.