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SPOKANE — At about 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning, four Skyline parents grabbed shovels and squeegees and went to work.

In 30-degree cold, they cleared a 100-yard driveway of the previous night’s snowfall. For almost an hour, they pushed about an inch of snow off the turf at Albi Stadium, the site of last Saturday’s Class 4A semifinal.

Across town, their players huddled in the back corner of a hotel parking lot, surrounded by dumpsters, a trio of buses and oil-stained chunks of snow and ice. Breaths poured from their mouths like smoke from the factory in the distance behind them as they ran through their defensive sets.

“Do it again!” defensive coordinator Chad Barrett yelled.

Barrett barked out different formations and directed numerous shifts. With each new order, the defense had a new adjustment to make, likely something Barrett excavated through hours of film study. Less than three hours before Skyline played Ferris of Spokane, Barrett and first-year Skyline coach Mat Taylor took no chances that any preparation was lost on the bus ride here.

“Our kids prepare better than any kids you could ever imagine,” Barrett says. “They understand what the expectation is.”

The expectations have been enormous. Skyline vaulted into national football rankings this season in large part because of its prized quarterback, junior Jake Heaps, and his two spectacular receivers, senior Gino Simone and sophomore Kasen Williams. Each could be the state’s top recruit in his senior season.

But the reasons the Spartans have stayed among the country’s top-rated teams as they made their way to today’s Class 4A championship game — they are ranked sixth by USA Today — go beyond three players. Skyline is 13-0, the KingCo 4A champion and a state finalist because a combination of skill and support, of coaching and confidence, of preparation and poise.

If Skyline beats district rival Issaquah tonight at 7:30 at the Tacoma Dome, the Spartans will finish as one of the most talented and most complete championship teams in the state’s history.

“Where’s the weakness in this ballclub?” asked John Bowers, a lifelong college coach and recruiter until he took over at Ballard this season. “It’s hard to find one. Groups like this don’t come around very often.

“Their ranking is well put,” added Bowers, who has recruited extensively in football hotbeds such as Ohio and Florida. “I could see them being the top team in the country. Not just sixth, but the top.”

But lose today, especially to a rival Issaquah team it beat 38-0 seven weeks ago, and Skyline knows this conversation evaporates in a second. Lose today, and the Spartans couldn’t make the case as one of the best teams in state history. Lose today, and they won’t even rank higher than the three Skyline teams that won titles before them.