A Small Town's Last Best Hope -- A Little Town Tries To End More Than 20 Years Of Frustration - Two Decades That Have Included Joy And Disappointment On The Football Field And Boom And Bust In The Surrounding Hills.

JOYCE, Clallam County - Clark Sage arrives at the Crescent gym filthy. His blue jeans are smeared with oil, mud and gasoline - products of a logging livelihood on the verge of extinction in this no-stoplight town sandwiched between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the foothills of the Olympic Mountains on Highway 112.

The timber boom arrived just after Sage took his final snap as Crescent's quarterback in 1967. A football boom was embraced soon after. Sage and other locals who "worked in the woods" would come down from the hillsides about 3 p.m., hang over the chain-link fence that surrounds Crescent's football field and watch their sons, nephews and neighbors prepare for a run at the state high-school title that eluded them.

It has been nine years since the Crescent Loggers last played for the Class B-8 state football championship. The nickname, but little else, has persevered. Environmentalists, known as "tree-huggers" here, are winning the war over the snow-covered mountains that look as if they have been shaved for surgery indefinitely postponed. Trucks still roll past the Joyce General Store, but less frequently and with smaller loads than a decade ago.

In a blue-collar town without a primary industry, football is one unifying force - perhaps the only one - that still draws the people of Joyce together.

"This town is always just dead now," said Sage's son, Ryan, the current Crescent quarterback. "You go to the store, and there's one or two cars. Restaurants have changed owners lots of times. It's just total depression in this town. I hope football helps it."

It does. School won't be in session tomorrow, and as many as 2,000 people are expected to make the 2 1/2-hour journey by ferry and car to the Tacoma Dome to watch unbeaten Crescent play top-ranked, undefeated Odessa for the Class B-8 state football championship.

"Not that we all live our dreams through our kids' accomplishments, but these kids are on the verge of doing things that their dads were very, very close to accomplishing," said Dave Bingham, former Crescent boys basketball coach.

Ten times the Loggers have reached the B-8 semifinals. Four times they played and lost in the state title game.

They know this at the General Store, where the motto is "If you can't find it, you don't need it." Amid the nuts and bolts, food, videos and penny Tootsie Rolls, Gretchen Beuttler wears a blue ribbon commemorating the 1996 state-final appearance and greets every customer by name.

"It's the game of the decade," Emil Moilanen said as he wrote Beuttler a check for gasoline. "It's the team with the most depth I've ever seen. If any team is going to do it from Joyce, it will be this one."

This team, which has 14 seniors, represents the best chance - perhaps the last chance in a long time - to win the town's first football title.

"To this community, it's going to be the greatest thing," said Logger defensive coordinator Mike Hazelett, a cement contractor who arrives at practice looking like he spent the day in a sandbox. "There's no real claim to fame, really, other than maybe a hamburger or logging, stuff like that. This is something the whole community can take pride in."

And something it eagerly has awaited since Gary Kautz took over as coach in 1968.

THE COACH

Tradition envelopes Kautz, 53, on and off the field. The 6-foot-3, 200-pound son of a local logger played for Crescent from 1956 to '59. His grandfather, Francis Schmitt, was one of the original settlers of this area. He strapped himself to the axle of a freight train to avoid paying for the trip from Minnesota in the early 1900s. A street in town bears his name.

Kautz worked several summers helping his father and grandfather in the woods until he watched three or four fellow workers die on the job.

"That was enough for me," Kautz said. "I made up my mind that I was going to college."

Kautz's hometown has changed considerably during his 28 years as coach, but football success has been a constant. The Loggers went 1-9 in 1968, his first year. They've gone 201-84 with 14 North Olympic League titles since. Records are sketchy in B-8 football, but Kautz, a graduate of Saint Martin's College in Lacey, might have more B-8 football victories than any other coach in state history.

It hasn't always been enough. Passion for football spans generations in this town. Burns and Sages and McGarvies have passed down dreams of state championships since the Loggers were beaten 46-6 by Washtucna in the 1974 title game. Three times since, Kautz has teased townspeople with trips to the final game only to lose.

Frustrated fans have responded, on occasion, by placing "For Sale" signs in his front yard.

"I'd come out and get the paper and there they were," Kautz said, laughing. "I'd take them out and put them in the garbage can."

Tomorrow's game is the last chance for the man whose low, raspy voice has prompted players present and past to dub him "The Pirate." Kautz will retire from coaching after this season.

"Coach has been working so hard for so many years to get this to work and he's finally got the right chemistry for the team," said senior Kirt Creiglow, who also is the student-body president. "He deserves to win this game."

THE PLAYER

Jakoba Square writes the name "Ada Square" on a piece of tape before every game in memory of his late grandmother, the woman responsible for raising him.

He isn't the only person to pay tribute to Ada - the 1994-95 Crescent Annual was dedicated to the woman whose efforts as a Sunday school teacher and teacher's aide made her as popular as the Southern food she cooked daily until her death in the spring of 1995. But the only African American in the 300-student (kindergarten through grade 12) Crescent Consolidated School District has benefited more from Ada's care than anyone else.

"She got me here," Square, 19, said. "Now everyone else takes care of me."

Square was given up for adoption at birth by a mother he hasn't seen in 15 years. Since his grandmother's death, Square has lived with classmate Rick Halberg's family, though he rarely spends an entire week under the same roof.

"He's had to grow up on his own here in the last two years," Hazelett said. "Basically nobody was here to look out for him except for Jakoba."

Square's life has mirrored Joyce's turbulent assimilation to city living. A decade of upheaval has transformed this town of 2,000 to 3,000 - the population varies depending on whom you ask - from an isolated logging burg to a bedroom community of nearby Port Angeles.

In his final game, this talented young man could help put Joyce on the map for more than just its famous "Logger Burger."

The 5-foot-9, 195-pound senior is perhaps the best athlete ever to wear a blue-and-yellow Loggers uniform. And he may be the first Crescent player to receive an athletic scholarship to a Division I school.

It hasn't been easy. Poor study habits forced Square to repeat the seventh grade. Anger nearly caused him to lash out last season when confronted with racial slurs from opponents for the first time.

"I just started screaming and yelling," Square said. "It's hard to walk away. I had to pull myself out four or five plays later because I was going to get into a fight."

His thoughts have turned more toward his missing mother as the state title game approaches. The prospect of her never having watched him play weighs on him.

"I've been thinking about finding her a lot the last few months," he said. "I'd like to know her, but . . . all I know is that she used to live in Seattle. Football is my best sport and I wanted to show her that I did something."

THE LAST LOGGER

Clark Sage was a self-employed logger for 17 years right out of high school. Work in the mountains could be found seven days a week, 52 weeks a year during the 1970s and early '80s. Even for short, thin men such as Sage, 46.

Guns, fishing rods and new cars graced the Sage estate. Vacations were frequent, and Sage's flexible schedule allowed him to coach son Ryan - to whom he passed down his hollow cheeks and shy manner - and his friends to three Peninsula little-league football championships in six years. "I had everything I wanted," Clark said, simply.

Then came government legislation that changed the viability of logging in the mid-1980s. Loggers fled Joyce for Alaska, Montana and Canada to survive. Bud Palmer, a Crescent senior, watched his father sell skidders, Caterpillars and other heavy equipment in order to stay in Joyce. The Sages sold most of their property for the same reason.

The only vacations Clark Sage takes now are unwanted days and weeks spent searching for the next job.

"When you go from making $60,000 and $70,000 and $80,000 a year down to making $25,000 or 30,000, you've got to change a lot of things," he said. "I could do all sorts of things and now it's a tough situation."

This is Sage's first year as a varsity assistant. Football is fun. It takes his mind off work. Being reunited with the same kids he coached for six years has been a bonus.

"It's probably the most fun I've ever had in my life," Sage said. "The kids love to listen. They love to learn. Me and Mike (Hazelett) knew when this group was 9 or 10 years old they were going to be a good team."

How good? Joyce residents and the rest of the state will find out tomorrow when Crescent tries to end more than 20 years of frustration. The two decades have included joy and disappointment on the football field, boom and bust in the surrounding hills and upheaval in this little town.

Paul Marsh will park his logging truck in the Tacoma Dome parking lot tomorrow afternoon before he watches Crescent attempt to win its first state championship. The truck is a visible link to Joyce's past.

His industry is struggling, some say dying. The town and the football team are not.

------------------- Gridiron Classic II

At Tacoma Dome -------------------

Tomorrow's title games

Class B-8 - 4 p.m., Crescent (Joyce) (12-0) vs. Odessa (11-0).

Class AA - 7:30 p.m., Capital (Olympia) (12-1) vs. West Valley (Yakima) (11-0).

Saturday's title games

Class A - 1 p.m., Toledo (12-1) vs. Royal (12-0).

Class B-11 - 4 p.m., Willapa Valley (Menlo) (12-0) vs. DeSales (Walla Walla) (11-1).

Class AAA - 7:30 p.m., Curtis (Tacoma) (12-1) vs. Richland (11-2).