The North Marion Huskies started the 2000 season on the right foot. Actually, the right arm would be more correct - the right arm of quarterback Jeremy Miller.

Miller, a senior, threw for 320 yards and five touchdowns en route to a 47-6 win over the Taft Tigers in action Friday night from Taft High School.

"We played well," said Husky head coach Tracy Jackson. "Miller threw the ball very well and our defense was awesome."

The defense Jackson is talking about only gave up 93 yards passing while holding the Tigers to -2 yards rushing.

"Justin Whitney, Jared Nelson and Dallas Branum had tremendous games for us," Jackson said.

Senior defensive tackle Andy McLaren also netted five individual sacks, and senior Adam Kraft had two interceptions.

Offensively for the Huskies, Abel Garza led all receivers with eight catches for 136 yards and a touchdown, while Ryan Krause had three catches for 104 yards and two touchdowns, including a 50-yard strike from Miller.

Ty Brack and Adam Kraft each had scoring receptions as well. Justin Whitney paced the Huskies (1-0) on the ground with 81 yards on 15 carries and a touchdown, while Seth Sumetz went for 69 yards on 12 carries and a touchdown. The Huskies rushed for 165 yards total and had nearly 500 yards of total offense.

But the schedule will get considerably tougher this week, as North Marion hosts the state's top-ranked team this Friday, the Scappoose Indians, with game time at 7 p.m.

"We get a good feel for where we are at as a team," Jackson said. "They run the same offense that we run, the same plays. We've studied them a lot and offensively, we are almost identical."

Playing the No. 1 ranked team, however, is not a focal point for Jackson and his Huskies.

"We are going into this game and focusing on us," he said. "We need to execute and play the way we know how we can and then see what happens. It's going to be a lot of fun no matter what."

TUALATIN - Canby volleyball fans should have been smiling as they left Tualatin High School Thursday night. Problem is, most of them weren't.

The source of the Cougars' unhappiness was a surprising 15-11, 12-15, 9-15 loss at the hands of the Tualatin Timberwolves in the season-opening Pacific-9 Conference match between the two schools. It came just days after Canby (0-1) pummeled Tualatin in a league jamboree.

If history is any indicator, Canby is right where they want to be. Well, sort of.

"It's just a small bump in the road," said Canby head coach Judi Gay, in her first season as head coach. "We just need to move on. We did the same thing last year (lose the first match) and ended up league champions. I just don't put too much weight into this one."

Caitlin O'Connor, who smoked the Wolves for 21 digs and five kills as a right-side hitter, chalked it up as history repeating itself. Cougar disappointment was erased somewhat with a small birthday celebration afterward for O'Connor, who turned 17.

"The history at Canby has been to lose the first match," O'Connor said. "We did it last year and we were league champs. We have a new group of girls this season and we just need to get to know each other."

If the Cougars are to erase the memory of this inauspicious start, they'll need to improve their passing game. In the critical third game, Tualatin jumped to an 8-2 lead thanks to Canby's serve receive that allowed seven aces during that stretch.

"That shocked me," Gay said. "I didn't expect that at all because I had a decent lineup out there. They just jumped on us, and it was very difficult to come back."

Out of the Timberwolves' final seven points, all but one was recorded via a kill. The rest were either serve receive mistakes or passing errors by CHS.

All were things that can be corrected, O'Connor noted, with a little mental concentration.

"It was more mental," she said of the passing. "They didn't beat us, we beat ourselves. We just let down mentally. Our serving was great and our setter (junior Jamie Schantin) was awesome. She did her best with all of our bad passing."

Sure, passing is what went wrong, but many more things went right for the defending champs. First, Canby displayed good defensive coverage for most of the match, resulting in many players racking up big dig numbers. Secondly, the serving was almost perfect. Finally, even when they were down big, the Cougars mustered several comeback attempts in the final game.

Ellie Raines led Canby with 24 digs, followed by go-getters Michelle Boeckman with 22 and Jenny Lawrence and O'Connor with 21 each. In terms of serving, Canby had just five errors in 72 attempts and were led by Raines' 17-of-17 performance.

And after trailing by that 8-2 score in the third game, the Cougars came back to close the gap to 11-8 before succumbing to Tualatin.

But that's hardly enough consolation for the Cougars.

"We really came in here expecting to win, but we didn't have a good serve receive," Gay said. "Tualatin definitely stepped up its level of play. We served really well and we're a fairly consitent serving club. I was a little worried about the serve receive, and the ones who are usually solid didn't pull their weight tonight."

Canby began the 90-minute match by pulling its weight in the opening game. Aside from some errors that kept the Wolves alive in the game, the Cougars looked like they'd make quick work of their opponent.

However, leads of 3-0 and 9-5 fizzled behind the miscues, and Canby managed to edge Tualatin 15-11 thanks to two straight Wolf hitting errors off of Boeckman's serve.

The lapses in concentration that led to the Cougar errors would be prophetic in the next two games.

After enjoying a 7-1 lead in the second game, Canby's own game suffered.

Three Tualatin kills and three Cougar errors tied the game at 8-8. More hitting errors put Canby down 14-9 before Lawrence drilled a big kill to get a sideout.

The Cougars were inspired by Lawrence and cut the lead to 14-12 before a Tualatin block sealed the game-two win.

>From there came the third game, and the rest was history.

Lawrence, a senior, ended up with five kills while Boeckman chipped in four blocks. Senior Danielle Palmer and Raines both had three blocks as well to lead the Cougar defense.

Playing mostly the second game, senior hitter Natalie Postlewait tallied an impressive eight digs and was 5-of-5 serving.

Canby returns to action at Woodburn on Tuesday in a 7 p.m. match against the Pac-9 newcomer Bulldogs, who didn't win a match last year as a 3A school.