After the sort of week that puts sports in perspective and a long slate of reschedules and postponements, the Morton-White Pass football team got to take the field again, and came away with a 55-20 win over White Swan.
“They really stayed focused and came out in the first half and just punched them in the mouth,” head coach Lee Metcalf said. “I was really happy to see that. They weren’t distracted. They were just super excited to be playing football, and they turned in a really good effort.”
The matchup was originally scheduled for Saturday at White Swan, but the Goat Rocks Fire — and the smoke it’s caused — forced it down the calendar, first to Monday, then to Tuesday. And after the brief bit of rain over the weekend made the air quality west of the mountains better, the location was flipped to, early Tuesday morning.
Metcalf said he has multiple players on his team who live in Packwood, and despite the fire growing to over 3,000 acres Tuesday, the game was a chance to focus on something else for an afternoon.
“I think football is kind of an escape for them,” he said. “With all the things that are going on, we have kids that could possibly lose their homes, I’m happy that they had an outlet to just be kids and play together and have fun.”
Once the game kicked off, the T-Wolves got off and running in a hurry. Quarterback Brecken Pelletier found the end zone twice early on his only two carries of the game. From there, tailback Carter Dantinne took over, announcing himself with a 95-yard touchdown run and adding two more scores — one on offense and one on defense — in the first half.
The senior finished with 166 yards on six carries, almost all of which came in the first quarter.
“He was kind of everywhere,” Metcalf said. “He ran through a lot of tackles, had a lot of (yards after contact) yardage.”
Pelletier and Judah Kelly both went for 47 rushing yards; the former also went 3-for-5 through the air for 18 yards, 14 of which came on two completions to the latter, while he also hit Hunter Hazen for a 4-yard touchdown in the second quarter.
On the other side of things, the MWP defense held its guests to just six points in the first half, which came on a skip-pass trick play, where the Cougars intentionally threw a lateralled fumble to a receiver, who caught it off the bounce and came up firing downfield for a 72-yard touchdown.
Morton-White Pass (2-0) now has a short week to get ready for its league opener, with Forks making the trip east Saturday.
