Strange and stressful as the rare Thursday night game inside Wolverine Country Stadium was, its ending was something out of any of the most competitive clashes one could recall.
Hosting fortune-starved Salida, beleaguered Bayfield didn’t have possession of the football.
Still, after senior kicker Ayden Casillas pushed a potential go-ahead field goal wide left from 46 yards out, the Wolverines still had 4:25 remaining in which to stop the Spartans from supplementing their slim 10-9 advantage, and then to put together a badly-needed drive to stop their own three-game slide.
They couldn’t and Salida held on to its 10-9 lead to give Bayfield its fourth-consecutive loss.
Carrying from his own 20-yard line after Casillas’ miss, SHS senior workhorse running back Nick Jones gained four yards on first down, but then lost two on second. Senior wide receiver/running back Matthew Edgington then rushed for seven yards, but Salida was nevertheless faced with a difficult decision on fourth-and-1 from their own 29.
Head coach Matt Luttrell wisely used a timeout to choose a play and confirm with senior quarterback Eli Schwarz. Operating under interim head coach Jon Wilmer, Bayfield knew what was coming … and couldn’t stop Schwarz from bulling his way through the line for a crucial three yards and earning a fresh set of downs.
Jones then rushed for another three, and Wilmer burned his last timeout with 1:57 left in hopes of conserving as much remaining time as possible to perhaps pull off a miracle. Assuming that his defense could first force a punt or another SHS turnover. Which, considering what had already happened in the fourth quarter, was a very real, though still remote possibility.
Only seven seconds after crashing up the gut from three yards out for a touchdown trimming the Spartans’ lead down to just a point (sophomore Max Cooper, however, blasted in from Casillas’ right to block the PAT kick) with 6:07 left in regulation, BHS senior Tyler Harriman had recovered a Jones fumble – and thus set up the aforementioned Casillas 46-yarder.
Versatile sophomore Harrison Williams had also recovered a fumble, when SHS junior Ayden Wells muffed a Casillas punt and Williams immediate dove on top of the gift at SHS’ 31 with 10:23 to go. And barely 11 seconds into the final frame, Harriman had intercepted Schwarz deep in Wolverine territory and returned it sufficiently out of danger.
Schwarz had started the fourth quarter picking off BHS senior quarterback Kaiden Witte only six ticks in, and had also recovered Bayfield senior running back Jack Waters’ fumble on the snap following Williams’ recovery.
The two teams combined for nine turnovers, so when the players returned after Wilmer’s timeout, they all knew what Bayfield’s bosses wanted. Jones wouldn’t give it to them; he instead carried for 19 yards toward SHS’ already-celebrating sideline, moved the chains one last time, and crushed the home team’s hopes.
“Absolutely I get fatigued, but that’s part of the game and you’ve got to push through it, persevere,” Jones said afterward. “The line did amazing today – shout out to the big guys – but we really just bounced back by (each) doing our one-eleventh on the field. The bus ride home’s going to be amazing.”
Salida (1-6 overall, 1-2 2A Intermountain) will visit Alamosa on Friday and kick off at 7 p.m. Bayfield (3-4, 0-3), meanwhile, will venture to Gunnison on Saturday and begin play at 1 p.m.
“The last couple weeks was easy for adversity to stack up,” Wilmer said, acknowledging the Wolverines’ 50-0 loss at AHS on Oct. 3, followed by a 55-7 homecoming week loss on Oct. 10 to Pagosa Springs. “We’ve had a few issues … and we’ve been striving to make sure we change our (football) culture and start digging deep; no matter what, we’re not out of the fight.”
