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Tumwater head coach William Garrow stressed that he wants his team to celebrate every win the same, no matter the score or the opponent. But that only came after he admitted what Friday night meant to his T-Birds, after they beat W.F. West 55-20 

“It was a long 365 days from the last time we saw those guys,” he said. “Our kids were excited, and they played well tonight.”

Not that they were counting, or anything like that.

In fact, it was 364 days exactly since W.F. West snapped a 13-year skid against Tumwater with a dominant win that put them in prime position to win their first 2A EvCo title in over a decade — and celebrated on Sid Otton Field accordingly.

“We knew what happened,” Garrow said. “(W.F. West) got a big win last year, and they celebrated the way that they should have. But our kids took it to heart and wanted to make sure that this year it wasn’t the same.”

This time around, there would be no such Bearcat jubilation; the T-Birds made sure of that early. And when W.F. West showed signs of life late in the second quarter after falling behind 27-0 to start, Tumwater squeezed any and all of it out of the Bearcats with a punishing third quarter.

“We talked about it in the locker room at halftime, just making sure the kids understood that we wanted to go out and be a dominant run team and be more physical than they were,” Garrow said.

His team responded with a 15-play, 73-yard drive that bled over seven minutes off of the clock and ended with Derek Thompson — one of four Thunderbirds to carry the ball on the possession — diving across the goal line from 3 yards out.

Sparked by the start, the Tumwater defense forced a three-and-out, and took only three plays to get back in the end zone, with a 51-yard pass from Ethan Kastner to David Malyory setting the T-Birds up at the 1-yard line and Kooper Clark getting the final 3 feet the next play to make it 41-14.

A year after the Bearcats held Tumwater to under 3 yards per carry on the ground, the Thunderbirds ran for 342, getting over 7 yards a pop. Clark led the way with 157 yards on 19 carries, scoring three touchdowns. Jaylin Nixon went for 82 yards, and Logan Cole, Mathias Rodriguez and Derek Thompson all found the end zone.

“Those guys all have different skillsets, and we’re lucky that we can just kind of roll them through there,” Garrow said. “If one gets dinged up, we can put the next one in, and he’ll do things very well.”

Kastner finished 9 for 15 for 152 yards, a touchdown and an interception. Malroy posted Tumwater’s first 100-yard receiving game of the season, hauling in five catches for 117 yards.

Gage Brumfield threw the ball 31 times, with 14 completions for 129 yards. But the Bearcats only managed 24 rushing yards as a team, with Declan McDonald going for 38 on 13 carries but the rest of the offense going backwards. 

W.F. West’s best spell came at the end of the second quarter, just after Tumwater went up 27-0. Connor Coleman sprung a huge kickoff return to give the Bearcats the ball in plus territory, and two plays later, Carson White out-jumped his defender to catch a 28-yard touchdown.

Tumwater turned the ball over on downs on its next possession, and the Bearcats put together their best drive of the game, going 54 yards in four minutes and getting back in the end zone when a busted coverage left Grady Westlund wide open for a 30-yard strike.

“Once we kind of found ourselves and started to execute, this team can make big plays,” WFW coach Dan Hill said. “We showed that tonight.”

On those two drives, the Bearcats gained a total of 121 yards. Across the rest of the night, the Tumwater defense held its hosts to just 32, and forced three turnovers.

The Thunderbirds will retain pole position in the 2A EvCo, and will play at similarly undefeated-in-league Aberdeen next week. W.F. West will get a week to prepare for another bruising rushing game, before it faces Rochester.