There was a lot to unpack heading into the District 2-4A Division I regular season finale between Dumas and Canyon on Friday at Happy State Bank Stadium.

With so many implications on the line, the Eagles were able to shake up the scene in the league by edging Dumas 33-31.

On top of a game with many storylines, one thing that stood out is Matt Lovorn earned his 100th win in 10 seasons as a head coach and his second year leading the Canyon football program.

“I’ve been surrounded by a lot of really good people,” said Lovorn, who is 100-29 between his time at Stratford and Canyon. “I have coached some great players and been able to get help from great coaches. Being a part of that many wins, and those wins can’t happen without all them around me.”

Now for what else happened.

With the Canyon (7-3, 3-2) win on top of Randall’s 45-13 win over Hereford and West Plains’ 49-17 victory against Pampa, the Raiders and Wolves are the co-district champions. Since Randall beat West Plains, the Raiders will be the No. 1-seed out of District 2-4A Division, West Plains is the No. 2-seed, Canyon will be third and Dumas drops to the fourth and final spot.

If Dumas (4-6, 3-2) was to beat Canyon, the Demons would have been a tri-district champion and No. 1-seed.

“This was not a do or die game,” Dumas head coach Aaron Dunnam said. “We’ve fought through a lot of adversity this year and we’ve done a lot of great things. We’ve done enough to get into the playoffs. I know a district championship would have been good, but the sky isn’t falling. We now have to turn are attention to the playoffs.”

This game unexpectedly saw an offensive explosion in the first half with a combined 55 points with the Eagles leading 31-24 at halftime. Canyon held an early 14-3 advantage following a Brox Hacker six-yard touchdown run late in the first quarter.

Dumas went on to outscore 21-7 through a stretch in the first half to take a 24-21 lead before the Eagles went on a 10-0 run to take a 31-24 advatnage into the break.

“I didn’t expect the first half to be like that,” Lovorn said. “I thought Dumas was giving us a lot of looks, especially in the pass game. We did the best we could to take advantage of it.”

Dunnam echoed Lovorn’s comments.

“This was a tale of two halves,” Dunnam. “I thought we played great on offense in the first half and not great on defense. Then it flipped in the second half for us.”

The second half saw just a total of nine points. The Demons marched down on the opening third quarter drive to tie the game on a swing pass from quarterback Colton Mills to Kelton Dill of 36-yards making it 31-all.

The game stayed tied until early in the fourth quarter when Dumas blocked an Eagles field goal attempt giving Dumas the ball at its own 2-yard line. That’s when disaster struck for the Demons. On a second down, Mills rolled out in the endzone and felt pressure from Eagle defensive end Jaxson Small, forcing Mills to throw the ball away. Mills was hit with a intentional grounding penalty putting Canyon up 33-31 with 8:47 left.

“That safety ended up being a big play,” Lovorn said. “There was a lot of things that go into getting a win, but that being the last score was huge for us.”

Dumas had one final chance in the late stages of this contest. Still trailing by two points, the Demons had the ball at the Eagles 43-yard line facing a 4th and nine with 1:32 to play and only one time out. Mills dropped back to pass and seemed to connect on a deep ball to Tate Dunnam for a go-ahead score, however, Dunnam was flagged immediately for illegal touching. That resulted in a loss of down giving Canyon the ball back and the win.

“We’ve had a lot of close games this year,” Lovorn said. “We haven’t won some of those, so it was nice to get this one. I think we were aggressive and we trusted what we were doing. We continue to build that trust and that was a huge reason we won.”

Before exiting the game late in the second half, Canyon running back Austin Turner ran for 143 yards on 21 carries with a pair of touchdowns. Quarterback Brox Hacker was 13-of-20 for 254 yards with a touchdown pass to Asher Cunningham, who snagged six catches for 100 yards. Small led the Eagles defensive effort with seven tackles, a sack, and a fumble recovery.

Mills ran for 82 yards and threw for 155 yards to help the Demons. Kelton Dill rushed for 69 yards, threw a touchdown pass and received a score.

Photos by Joe Garcia III: