School might not be in session, but that won’t stop prep football from getting underway this weekend.

The Oak Harbor Wildcats travel to Civic Stadium in Bellingham at 7 p.m., on Friday to face Sehome and the Coupeville Wolves make their way to Blaine at 6 p.m., on Saturday.

Wildcat head coach Dave Ward feels his team will be ready for Friday’s game despite the loss of 20 seniors from last year’s class 4A state playoff team that went 10-2 overall and 7-1 in league.

“We’ve improved a lot since spring camp and we’re not too beat up,” he said.

One spot the Wildcats will slightly lack depth is at the quarterback position. The anticipated starter, sophomore Marshall Lobbestael, is nursing an injury and is not expected to return to the field until the third week of the season. Senior James Blunk, who started at quarterback during his sophomore year for the junior varsity team, will fill in.

“He’s a real good athlete and he should do just fine,” Ward said.

The Wildcats should see a tough opponent in Sehome, who came up just shy of making the 2003 class 3A playoffs and posted a 6-4 overall and 4-3 league record last year.

“We know they have a good team,” Ward said. “Our guys have to be ready for a physical game.”

According to Ward, the Mariners run a fullback oriented offense and tend to stack a lot of players up the middle on defense in order to stop the run.

“They like to make you throw as much as they can, which we have no problem with,” he said.

Friday’s game can be heard locally on KWDB 1110 AM.

Coupeville, who struggled through growing pains with a 1-9 record in 2003, takes on a team who had similar problems. The Blaine Borderites went winless in class 2A during the 2003 season, posting a 0-9 record.

Coupeville coach Ron Bagby expects them to be tougher this year.

“Last year they didn’t have very many kids turn out, this year they had a bunch of kids turn out,” he said. “They’re feeling really good about their program.”

Blaine has a very solid line according to Bagby and they like to run and throw the ball.

“They’ll throw it about 50 percent of the time and they’ll run it the other 50 percent,” he said.

Coupeville is in full health for Saturday’s game.

A full preview of both the Wildcats and the Wolves will appear in the fall sports preview in Saturday’s edition of the News-Times.