It's not often that you hear a football coach speaking to his team about its next three games.

Yet, that's what Washington Coach Tony Lombardi was doing on the Kingston Stadium turf Thursday night, shortly after the Warriors had dispatched Waterloo West, 49-7, to end the regular season.

Will Griffin ran 29 times for 186 yards and three touchdowns, and Braedon Tovey and Mitch Bredeson ran for two touchdowns apiece for Washington (6-3). The Warriors rolled up 380 yards of rushing offense and held Waterloo West (0-9) to 184 total yards.

But the topic Lombardi discussed with his team after the game was the playoffs and the possibilities that lie ahead for the Warriors. He told his team where they may play Wednesday in the first round of the Class 4A playoffs (Iowa City West or Davenport Assumption), who their possible second round match may be against (Linn-Mar or Cedar Falls) and the fact that a quarterfinal game would be back on the Kingston Stadium Field Turf against either Iowa City High or Bettendorf.

Rarely, if ever, do you hear a coach -- in any sport -- speak of anything but the next game, mostly for fear of bad luck. But Lombardi said in the locker room he has done this with all of his teams heading into the playoffs.

"I don't believe you can achieve anything if you don't first see it and know where you're going and what path you're on," Lombardi said. "Don't get me wrong. We're going to be worried about Wednesday night. But I want them to know that it's attainable for us to get to the Dome and what path they're going to have to navigate to get there. I think that's important for young people to start to visualize, to wrap their mind around the fact that we're capable of achieving that."

The state semifinals and finals are played at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. A possible second-round game against Cedar Falls also would be played in the UNI-Dome.

"We expect to play well in the playoffs. Last year we did not," Lombardi said. The Warriors were ousted in the first round a year ago by Dubuque Hempstead. "But the previous years we went to the quarters, the semis and the quarters.

"We think we're better than a 6-3 football team. Now we got to go prove that."

Washington's next opponent depends upon the outcome of Friday night's Dubuque Wahlert-Kennedy game. If Kennedy wins, the Warriors likely will play at Iowa City West, a team they destroyed a week ago, 66-37. If Kennedy loses, the Warriors likely will play at Davenport Assumption.

"When it gets to Saturday, we'll zero in on who we're playing next," said Tovey, the Warriors' senior quarterback who scored on runs of 11 and 20 yards the only two times he carried the ball.

The Warriors have endured a great deal of adversity all season. AJ Puk, the starting quarterback a year ago as a sophomore, decided after fall drills had started that he did not want to play football and instead wished to concentrate on a promising baseball career. Griffin, a speedburner who finished second in the state 100 meter dash last spring, had surgery for a torn ankle ligament at about the same time. Cornerback/receiver Ryan Cain soon followed with a broken collarbone.

"This is a team that has had to deal with more adversity than any other team than I've been associated with," Lombardi said. "To be standing here at 6-3 with wins over City High and City West - on the road - and late in the season when they could have pretty much folded their tents, I think they're pretty mentally tough."

And, maybe for the first time all season, they're pretty much healthy.

Griffin has run for 367 yards the past two games, though he claims he still is at 90 percent and probably won't be at 100 percent until track season next spring.

"I still have that little 'gittup' that I need to get me faster by track season," said Griffin, who was playing his fourth game of the season. He had six carries of 10 yards or more, with a long of 30, against Waterloo West. He scored on runs of 3, 1 and 2 yards to help the Warriors to a 21-0 lead early in the second quarter. "We keep battling.

"A lot of people thought we were going to be horrible, with Puk quitting and my injury to my ankle and Ryan's collarbone," Griffin said. "And we have a small team, so a lot of us have to go both ways (offense and defense). But we realize that we have something here that I think other teams don't have. We have a lot of heart, kind of like to never back down."

Lombardi said that against Waterloo West he wanted to increase the workload for Griffin, who carried the ball 15 times for 181 yards against Iowa City West last Friday. He has 79 carries for 448 yards and eight touchdowns in the four games since he returned.

"I want to get him in shape," Lombardi said. "He's been sitting on his butt for nine weeks. I got to get him ready to play."

Griffin said Lombardi got the whole team tuned into playing during summer camp.

"He really instilled it in us that we have something here and with heart, the sky's the limit," Griffin said of Lombardi. "We felt we can do something that hasn't been done before and, hopefully, that's that state championship."

But to get there, the Warriors have to know the way.

"I think in order for anything special to happen in high school athletics, kids have to play a little bit above themselves and have to play for one another, for the institution, and that is with your heart," Lombardi said. "You have to be able to risk - emotionally - failure, in order to achieve.

"That's very hard for young people to do. They're almost more content to say 'We came up a little short, but, yeah, we gave it a whirl.'

"We're going to give it everything we got. And you know what? We still might come up short. But we're not going to die. The sun will come up tomorrow. But really, it's about taking that journey and having the courage to take the journey."

That's why Lombardi talked to his team about the road to the Dome.

"You can either get in the middle of the whitewater rapids, or you can stand on the side and watch and wonder if you'd have the guts to get in that river," he said. "I'm one of those guys that I want to be in the rapids. I want to take those guys with me."

WASHINGTON 49, WATERLOO WEST 7

Waterloo West     0        0      7       0   -       7
Washington        14      14      7      14   -     49

CRW - Will Griffin 3 run (Michael Daughtery kick)
CRW - Griffin 1 run (Daughtery kick)
CRW - Griffin 2 run (Daughtery kick)
CRW - Braedon Tovey 11 run (Daughtery kick)
WW - Dequayvious Martin 10 run (Jon Schmadeke kick)
CRW - Tovey 20 run (Daughtery kick)
CRW - Mitch Bredeson 5 run (Daughtery kick)
CRW - Bredeson 25 run (Riyad Ajram kick)

Team Stats

First downs -- WW 9, CRW 23

Rushes yards -- WW 31-93, CRW 53-380

Receiving yards -- WW 91, CRW 83

Comp-Att-Int -- WW 8-17-1, CRW 4-8-0

Punts-avg. -- WW 6-29.3, CRW 1-50

Fumbles-lost -- WW 1-1, CRW 0-0

Penalties-yards -- WW 8-40, CRW 2-15

Individual Stats

Rushing -- WW: Dequayvious Martin 20-86, Shawn Bowers 6-5, Dequan Campbell 4-3, Makayle Phillips 1-(-1).

CRW: Will Griffin 29-186, Mitch Bredeson 7-64, Walter Short 5-44, David Tann 4-35, Braedon Tovey 2-31, Flynn Heald 6-20.

Passing -- WW: Bowers 8-16-1-91, Brandon Tovar 0-1-0-0. CRW: Tovey 4-8-0-83.

Receiving -- WW: Skyler Capelle 3-26, Alex Brown 2-19, Martin 1-34, Kevin Storey 1-12.

CRW: Heald 2-30, Mitch Blades 1-50, Ryan Cain 1-3.

Sophomore score - Washington 13, Waterloo West 6.