Wash High’s quick thinking leads to win in instant classic
It has been this way for decades.
When the best-designed football schemes only work well enough for you to be tied with two minutes remaining, you hand the ball to your best athletes and tell them to make a play, even if the coach doesn’t know it’s coming.
Trudging through his first game at running back, entering the game with only four carries on the season, Washington High School’s Dan Walker Jr. looked the part for most of Friday night – until two minutes flashed on the scoreboard at Wash High Stadium.
That’s when Walker Jr. simply looked like a pure athlete.
With the ball in his hands on a fourth-and-four play in Prexies territory, Walker Jr. was stopped. There was nowhere to go as more than half of the McGuffey defense surrounded him several yards shy of the first-down marker.
So Walker Jr. did what no running back is taught to do.
Seeing no hope for a first down, Walker Jr. alertly lateraled the ball to quarterback Zack Swartz, who ran 35 yards for the first down. Two plays later, Walker Jr. scored a 23-yard touchdown with 1:01 left in regulation to lift Washington over rival McGuffey, 42-36, in an Interstate Conference instant classic.
“Crazy,” said Washington coach Mike Bosnic. “I was like ‘No, no, no, no,’ but then it was like, ‘Oh my, yes!’ It was unbeknownst to me, even though I knew they talked about it at halftime.”
Yes, as crazy as it sounds, the play was drawn up between Walker Jr. and Swartz.
“He was getting turned around a lot in the first half on his runs,” Swartz said. “He is a stellar athlete, so we talked about pitching the ball back and maybe hitting a big play.”
The win gives Washington (6-1, 9-1) a share of the conference title and a home first-round playoff game next Friday night.
“It’s just amazing that you can put in your fourth running back, who is 6-2, 220 pounds and looks like Herschel Walker,” McGuffey coach Ed Dalton said about Walker Jr. “We stopped their football play. They made an athlete play.”
Walker Jr.’s final touchdown was his fourth of the night. He finished with 27 carries for 216 yards.
“As the game went on I got used to playing running back,” Walker Jr. said. “On that pitch, I saw back there and nobody was near him. He says all the time that if it’s not there to pitch it back.”
In a back-and-forth game that the Prexies led 22-15 at halftime, McGuffey (5-2, 8-2) tied the score three separate times in the second half, including on a 51-yard fumble return by Christian Clutter to make it 36-36 with 4:10 remaining in the fourth quarter.
Clutter tied the score earlier in the half with a 62-yard touchdown reception on the third play of the third quarter and a one-yard rushing score. The senior running back had 14 carries for 120 yards and five total touchdowns.
“He’s the real deal,” Dalton said of Clutter. “When he was in middle school, I yelled at the coach about only giving him the ball six times a game. Now, my assistants yell that to me from the booth. He is just a gamer.”
McGuffey advanced the ball into Prexies’ territory on its final possession but failed to convert on a pair of passes and turned the ball over on downs.
Unlike its last two games, Washington started fast with a pair of long touchdown runs – 42 and 75 yards – to take an 14-0 lead in the first quarter.
“This win is up there with some of the great wins I’ve been a part of at Washington,” Bosnic said. “I’ve been fortunate to have some great athletes. It’s fun to coach. That pitch at the end was just two athletes making a play. Tonight was a lot of fun to be a part of.”