“You OK?” a passerby asked Central Kitsap football coach Mark Keel just moments after his team beat South Kitsap last Friday.

“Not yet,” Keel replied, letting out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

After all, winning 14-13 is thrilling enough.

But when your opponent has 22 seconds, a time-out and the ball on your own 5-yard line, a win is even better.

“It was a situation I feel like we shouldn’t have been in,” Keel said. “The guys just stayed together and kept playing.”

South Kitsap founds itself in the aforementioned situation against the Cougars. SK never used its final time out, letting more than 16 seconds tick off the clock before finally snapping the ball. Rather than spiking the ball and the stopping the clock for a chip-shot field goal, SK quarterback Gordy Anderson couldn’t find receiver Leon LeDeaux, with the ball hitting the ground as the clock hit zero.

“That was something,” CK running back H’Arion Gaulden, who rushed for 86 yards and a score, said. “That’s how football is played. Down to the wire, the last play.”

Keel said while the win was nice, it exposed some flaws his team will have to correct.

“I learned we’re gonna have to get a lot better in a lot of places,” Keel said.