Tipped pass by Tonasket on final play seals victory over Odessa
Section 7 of the Tacoma Dome is 30 seats across and 25 rows high. Only 13 rows would be needed to accommodate the population of Inchelium, which on Saturday became the home of the state B-8 football champions.
The Hornets weren't crowned the champion until the final play, when senior David Tonasket broke up an Odessa pass and brought a third championship to the tiny northeast Washington town on the strength of a 34-30 victory.
Almost all their lives, the Inchelium players had heard tales of the previous title teams, coach Duane Gatlin said. Most of these players have relatives who were on those 1983 and 1991 champions. And Saturday — one game away, and then finally one play away — they seized their place in Inchelium football history.
"You look at a lot of these players that were out on the field, in 1983 their dads were playing, their brothers, uncles and aunts ... well not aunts," Gatlin said, understandably carried away. "But these guys have seen that. They heard about it when they were young. We made a commitment last year ... to come to the Dome and give it everything we've got to bring the state championship to Inchelium again."
It wasn't easy. The Hornets led, 14-0, in the second quarter but fell behind, 24-14, early in the fourth. Then what had been a reasonably stout defensive game gave way to classic B-8 hysteria. The Hornets scored 14 consecutive points to take a 28-24 lead with 4 minutes, 39 seconds left. Then Odessa pulled ahead again, 30-28.
That gave Inchelium the ball with 1:43 left. Though not much of a lead by B-8 standards, it proved to be enough and almost too much. Gatlin pulled out a surprise that helped his Hornets drive 51 yards in just five plays to reclaim the lead, 34-30.
"It's called a 'shotgun read option,'" Gatlin said. "That was the key to the last drive. We hadn't run that all year. We'd been saving it for the right moment, and this was the right moment."
But it wasn't yet the last moment. Odessa had 28 seconds remaining, and used 26 of them in their race to the Inchelium 20.
The final two seconds ticked away as a pass spiraled into the right corner of the end zone. Tonasket, whose brother played on the 1983 championship team, swatted the ball away.
Asked what he was thinking while the ball was in the air, he provided the simple answer: "Bat it down."
Standing on the sideline in front of Section 7, Gatlin also kept it simple during the final play.
"I think I was reasonably calm," he said. "Normally I'd be screaming and yelling and hollering at the kids. But today they knew what they had to do."
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