Mount Si High School’s football team ended its 2008 season with one of the most devastating losses in the program’s history, which came in a state playoff game against Eastside Catholic School. The Wildcats look to return to the postseason in 2009 and wash that bad memory away.

Fans and competition can expect Wildcat football: “a very physical style of play, some pretty traditional offense, hard-nosed defense and improved special teams,” head coach Charlie Kinnune said.

Last year he coached the team to a 6-5 finish.

Mount Si will have several seniors and juniors leading the way this season but had some key players graduate, including running back Sean Snead, now at Pacific Lutheran University.

Senior Donny Hendrickson is hoping to fill Snead’s position. Other seniors that could see some work in that position include twin brothers Chaz and Code Blair and newcomer Lars Swensen. Junior Matt Bankston could also get a chance to play that role.

The offensive and defensive lines will see significant change. Leading the lines will be senior Aaron Moetului, who is expected to be among the top linesmen in the league in 2009. A couple of big pieces of that line from last year — Michael Nelson and Ryan Ransavage — have moved on to college. Looking to replace them are several seniors, among them Cameron Hilsmann and Ahmad Korma.

Hilsmann says fans can look for the line to do their best in 2009.

“They can expect that we’re going to try as hard as we can, no matter if we’re losing or winning, that we’re going to keep the intensity up and work hard to get another touchdown,” Hilsmann said.

“We’re going to give it our all and they can expect us to always go 100 percent and always do our best,” Korma added.

The quarterback position, vacant with the graduation of Tyson Riley, is still up in the air. Among the possibilities is senior Rossco Castagno, but Kinnune may have other ideas up his sleeve.

“Rossco is our best athlete that’s going to score points,” the coach said.

Other candidates for the spot are senior Chris Clark and junior Ian Ilgenfritz.

Kinnune says the defense will be ready.

“We’re going to get a dose of passing offenses coming our way early on. We like to give different looks defensively to these quarterbacks,” Kinnune said. “You’ve got to move around, you have to use some deception, you need to put some well-placed pressure on them, but you live by the blitz, you die by the blitz.”

The goal is simple.

“We want to play what we call a significant tenth game. We don’t want to end up doing a crossover with the Metro League. We want to be able to sneak into that third spot,” Kinnune said.

He expects the Bellevue Wolverines to once again be the top competition in Kingco 3A.

Liberty and Interlake could make some big improvements. They boast the league’s two best quarterbacks in Liberty’s Trey Wheeler and Interlake’s Matt Malos.