TUMWATER — The sun was still high in the sky when the Tumwater football team took the field for a Friday afternoon matchup against Kelso, moved up due to a double-booking at Sid Otton Field. But that didn’t mean the T-Birds weren’t lights-out on defense.
Far from it.
Tumwater put together a masterpiece on both sides of the ball, powered by an absolutely suffocating effort on defense, and the Thunderbirds (3-0) capped off a tough non-league slate with a 54-0 blowout of the 3A Hilanders.
“It feels amazing. I know the work we put in over the summer is paying off,” senior linebacker Dane Iversen said. “We meshed well. At the beginning, it was a little slow, but I feel like as the game progressed we clicked better as a team. We figured out their weaknesses, and we just attacked them.”
The T-Birds held the Hilanders to a grand total of 33 yards — 24 on the ground and 9 through the air. Kelso picked up four first downs, three of which came in the first half; in the second, Tumwater forced two three-and-outs, had two interceptions, and recovered a fumble, as the backups — and their backups — pitched in to maintain the shutout.
“Our (defensive) coaches are good dudes, and they wanted to make sure that no matter who was in the game, the kids have the goal to get the shutout every week,” Tumwater head coach William Garrow said. “It’s a cool thing for them to do that.”
And the defense fed into the offense all afternoon long.
Garrow said that during the week, the Thunderbirds talk about “Five-Minute Goals.’ Every time Tumwater scores, the coaches want the defense to get the ball back, and the offense to score again within five minutes of gametime.
Friday, the Five-Minute Goals started rolling as the T-Birds did in the second quarter.
After taking over at their own 25-yard line, up 7-0 midway through the second. Kooper Clark took a handoff and scampered up the sideline for 66 yards into the red zone. On the very next play, he took a pitch into the end zone, starting the five-minute clock at the 7:00 mark.
After a three-and-out, the T-Birds got it back near-midfield, and needed just two minutes of gametime to get back in the end zone, on another Clark run with 3:33 left in the half.
That restarted the five-minute clock, but it would only take a matter of seconds this time. On Kelso’s very first play of the ensuing drive, the Hilanders fumbled, and Iversen dove on it for the first of four Tumwater takeaways.
“I saw the ball on the ground, and I had to go jump on it,” he said.
Ethan Kastner hit Wyatt Chase on a 30-yard touchdown on the very next play, and all of a sudden the lead had ballooned to 27-0.
The T-Birds hit two more Five-Minute goals in the third quarter, taking advantage of an Iversen interception to open the third quarter and touchdown runs by Clark, Logan Cole, and Mathias Rodriguez.
“It’s a point of pride that the coaches talk about with the kids all the time, so it’s nice to see that in a game,” Garrow said.
Clark led the way on the ground with 116 yards and three touchdowns on nine carries, while Rodriguez had 86 yards — 72 of which came on one rush in the third quarter.
As a unit, Tumwater rushed for 310 yards.
“We’re going to do our best to take whatever it is they give us,” Garrow said.
Kastner finished his evening 5 for 11 for 130 yards, highlighted by a 49-yard strike over the top to Jacob Dillon to start the scoring in the first quarter.
Tumwater now rolls into its league schedule with as much momentum as any team in the state, off the back of three dominant wins against high-level competition. Now, the T-Birds will take on the 2A EvCo in a campaign to reclaim their league title, starting next week at home against Centralia.
“We talk about different phases,” Garrow said. “Phase 1 is the non-league, and Phase 2 for us is the league season. Now, our kids have the goal to go out and win a league championship, so we’re going to go out doing everything we can, and it starts next week against Centralia.”
