Jewell 10/17/25

When I heard that the students in Jewell were going to have their own football team this year, I knew I had to get to a game there while I had the chance.  The Blue Jays have been playing football since 1981, and as recently as 2016 they played 11-man ball.  But they didn’t have a team in 2015 or 2017, and even after dropping down to 6-man football in 2018 they had to team up with Vernonia in 2023 for their players to have a chance to play.  They’re back with a team of their own this season, but I’m not sure how long that will last, so this week I headed up into the coast range to see a game in Jewell.

Mrs. Ednold had to work late and was unable to make the trip, so I was on my own as I hit the road.  It was a near perfect autumn evening to be driving through the valley, but apparently everyone else thought so too, and the roads were packed with people headed somewhere on a Friday.  For a lot of those people, that somewhere must have been the coast, because as soon as I got on Hwy. 26 things slowed down even more.  I wasn’t in a huge hurry, though, and I had Voice of the Beehive to keep me company, so it was all good.  Then, just a few miles on the other side of the Coast Range summit, I saw the signs for route 103, and I knew I was getting close.

I have some very vague middle-of-the-night memories of the only other time I’d been to Jewell as the driver for a team of relay walkers making their way to the coast many years ago, and my memories of the place being less of a town and more of an intersection of two winding roads deep in the mountains proved to be pretty accurate.  I also remember thinking that the very idea of a relay walking team was pretty silly and wondered why anyone would spend their time and energy doing something so crazy. There was a post office in the unincorporated community once, named after onetime U.S. Postmaster General Marshall Jewell, but that’s been gone for over 50 years and there are really only three things that let you know you’re in Jewell now:  The intersection itself, the Jewell Meadows Wildlife Area, and the Jewell School, a K-12 campus that’s the only school in the Jewell School District, all in a little valley of the Nehalem River and Fishhawk Creek with the Clatsop State Forest closing in on several large pastures and meadows.

I had a little time to kill so I took a left at the intersection onto route 202 and drove west for a mile or so until I came to the Jewell Meadows viewing area.  There were only two other cars in the huge parking lot and I think that was because there was nothing to view.  Supposedly there is a huge herd of Roosevelt Elk that call the preserve their home, but all I could see was the meadow itself with not so much as a stray cat in it, and for some reason I wasn’t even surprised.  Mildly disappointed, I jumped back in The Bucket and headed back toward the school that I’d passed on my way in. 

I took the right turn back onto route 103 and within a few hundred yards there was the herd of elk!  Or at least part of it.  Fortunately I was driving slow.  They had decided to cross the road just as I was driving by and for a second I wasn’t sure if I would be safer stopping and allowing them to go in front of me, or gunning it and trying to get well out of their way, but the sheer size of those things made me want to put some distance between us, so I accelerated and had gotten probably 20 feet past the group by the time they had climbed the bank and started loping across the blacktop.  There must have been 2 or 3 dozen of them, and judging from the wear and tear on each side of the road they have probably been using that spot as a crosswalk pretty regularly for some time.  Of course, by the time I gathered my senses, pulled over and grabbed my camera I just had enough time to get a grainy picture of the last few stragglers, but I can’t say I’d ever want to get much closer to a herd of elk headed my way than I had gotten, and I was glad the school was only a short drive in front of me.  

There has been a school at Jewell since 1913, but the current buildings look to be from this century.  The whole campus looks modern, and a little bigger than I was expecting considering they average less than 10 students in each grade.  Just north of the school I found the entrance to a big parking lot where I left The Bucket and walked toward the lights I could see not far off to the south.  It never feels quite right to walk into a game without paying someone, and I really did try to find someone to give my money to, but nobody seemed interested in taking it from me, so I just kept on towards the grandstand.

The most noticeable thing when you get near the natural grass football field is the running track around it.  It can’t be very old, and the bright blue and yellow color is in stark contrast to the surroundings.  Just looking at it made me want to break into a sprint, but my legs reminded me that that would be quite impossible, so I just kept walking and followed the track around to the west side of the field and picked out a choice seat on the wooden bleachers inside the wooden grandstand.  From there I could see that the sign on the scoreboard indicated that I was at “Sam’s Field”, but I don’t know who Sam is, or was.

Jewell plays in Special District 2 of the 1A-6-man division, and had won one of their five games so far this season.  But, as I mentioned, they haven’t even had their own team the past two seasons so just their existence is a step forward for the Blue Jays.  This game would be a league matchup against the Eagles from Eddyville Charter, who were coming in at 5-1 with a top 5 state ranking.  The Blue Jays have never won a state championship and, in fact, have never even won a playoff game in their history.  Their last playoff appearance was over twenty years ago, so there’s no history of football dominance for them to lean on, but a competitive showing against the Eagles would be a step in the right direction.

There may have been twenty people in the stands when a student flutist (or flautist, if you prefer) played a perfect minimalist rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, but the crowd continued to arrive up to and after the opening kickoff, and by halftime the place was probably half full.  The Blue Jays didn’t start well, so maybe the late arrivals had an inkling of how things were going to play out.  The Eagles ran ten offensive plays in the first quarter and scored five touchdowns.  The Blue Jays looked totally unprepared for what they were facing, and Eddyville ran and passed with little resistance.  Jewell’s offense didn’t look much better than their defense, and it was a rare play that didn’t end up losing yardage for them.  It was a little painful to watch.

Despite the flutist’s excellent work to open the game, there was no pep band present and no cheerleaders to distract us from the play on the field.  That is, until a group of elementary-age girls took to the track to lead us in the one cheer that they had picked up somewhere.  So, we were periodically led through “Here we go Blue Jays – Here we go!” with six or seven little girls jumping around with zero choreography or synchronization, and I think it actually did improve everyone’s mood a little bit.  Then between quarters I made a trip to the concession stand for a cheeseburger and coffee and realized that the multi-talented girl who played the flute moonlighted as a volunteer dishing up food for the fans.  I also noticed, on my way there and back, that many people had chosen to park their cars behind and to the side of the grandstand and watch from there, so there were more spectators than I had thought there were.

That fully loaded burger did wonders for me but didn’t seem to do much for the Blue Jays players as they continued to get torched by the Eddyville offense, and they were soon down 45-0, with no relief in sight.  I’m not sure how, exactly, things changed after that point, but Jewell did find a way to start playing better after that.  Their running backs started finding holes in the Eddyville defense and they started making the tackles to stop the Eagles that they hadn’t been able to make in the first quarter and a half.  Eddyville did have quite a few substitutes and might have started playing some of them, or maybe the Blue Jays were making adjustments based on what they’d seen early in the game.  Whatever the case, they managed a score of their own before halftime and us fans were very relieved to see something besides a 0 on the HOME side of the scoreboard.

There was no halftime marching band, but though there were no cheerleaders someone had made a big banner for the Blue Jays to run through as they came back out onto the field after their break, and that was the extent of the halftime entertainment.  I guess they just didn’t want folks to get too excited. Due to the score, the clock ran continuously throughout the second half, and it may actually have been Eddyville who were most thankful for that.  The Blue Jays scored a couple more times in the second half and the final score was 20-52.  Jewell was never going to win it, but when you consider they lost their first three games of the season by a combined 214 - 0, I’d say they’re making progress.  They had played their opponents to a 20-20 tie after that first quarter, so they have a little momentum going into their next game against the undefeated and #1 ranked Triangle Lake Lakers next week.

It had been a pleasant night in the cozy grandstands.  It got cool but was never cold, and the clouds overhead never even threatened to ruin our dry evening.  After my brush with the elk herd I wasn’t looking forward to navigating the serpentine road back down to the highway in the dark.  It had been challenging enough in the daylight.  I did see three or four of the elks’ smaller cousins standing by the side of the road, and I saw a hundred tree stumps that appeared to be other deer at first glance, but I made it back to the highway without incident.   I heard on the radio that the Toronto Blue Jays had lost their game to the Seattle Mariners, so I was thinking maybe it was just a bad day to be a Blue Jay.  But later I learned that the Creighton University volleyball team had beaten St. John’s at that same time, so I guess the mascot didn’t really determine the outcome of our game. Whatever the reason for this loss, it would be nice if the nine Jewell players who won't be graduating next spring come back out for football next year so the Blue Jays can continue to have a team of their own, no matter how good they are.