One person obviously didn’t win the game all by himself Friday night when Dalhart visited Bushland in a key District 1-3A Division I game.
When it was all over though, Dalhart had to be thrilled to have Hunter Trusler.
In a game where the winner figured to have no worse than the district’s No. 2 playoff seed sewn up at the end of the evening, it seemed that Trusler was involved in every play no matter who had the ball. Dalhart’s senior quarterback played a part in all but one of his team’s points, as the Wolves rolled past Bushland 31-7 and stayed tied for the district lead.
That win sets up Dalhart (7-1, 1-0 in district) to host Shallowater in next week’s regular season finale to decide who the outright district champion and No. 1 playoff seed will be. Bushland (3-6, 0-2) figured to provide a stiff test, but Trusler and the Wolves were simply too much.
“I’m at a loss for words,” said Dalhart coach Joey Read, as if trying to explain a midseason slump as opposed to a late-season surge. “Our kids played hard for four quarters and we had some kids stand out but we played well as a team. It is definitely very, very hard to go to Bushland and play against their band, their crowd and their coaches. They have a lot of tradition.”
The rest of this story is only for subscribers.
Dalhart never appeared in much trouble after the opening minutes and took control of the game by dominating the first half, using a balanced offense and a stingy defense to take a 19-0 halftime lead.
The Wolves took the opening kickoff and marched 62 yards for a touchdown, converting a pair of fourth downs in the drive. They reached the end zone on an 8-yard pass from Trusler to Kaleb Speer to make it 7-0.
Trusler was also involved in both of Dalhart’s second quarter touchdowns, scoring on runs of 10 and 3 yards. He had the ball in his hands just about all the time in the first half, running it 24 times and finished the game with 139 yards and three touchdowns on 33 carries and also threw for 135 yards.
“Usually I don’t expect that but the coaches prepared me this week and said I was going to have to run the ball a lot,” Trusler said. “I got my mind right for that. We just have to come together as a team. It’s a brotherhood.”
Defensively, Dalhart limited Bushland to 56 yards and three first downs in the first half. In one stretch late in the second quarter, the Wolves had three interceptions in a six-pass span and finished with six for the game.
Throwing the ball became a necessity for the Falcons, as they ran for only nine yards in the first half and 63 for the game. They didn’t pick up a rushing first down until the third quarter.
“It was a challenge to really do anything consistently offensively tonight,” Bushland coach Josh Reynolds said. “Credit to Dalhart. They had a good plan and did stuff defensively we hadn’t seen. We just never adjusted to it.”
Bushland had good field position on a couple of first half possessions, but the Falcons were twice stopped on downs. They played good enough defense to thwart Dalhart when the Wolves got an interception near midfield.
Despite the halftime margin, the Falcons were still in the game, and when they took the second half kickoff they generated some momentum by running a hurry-up offense with several short possessions to drive into Dalhart territory.
That’s where a quarterback made a big play, but it turned out to be Trusler again. Bushland quarterback Kannon Aven was looking over the middle when Trusler swooped in from his safety position to intercept the ball, found a crease ahead of him and took it 75 yards for a touchdown to make it 25-0 and deflate whatever momentum Bushland may have built.
“That was the climax probably of the game,” said Trusler, who had two interceptions on the night. “They were maybe about to score and I bring it back and that completely shifts the energy for the team. That gave us the most confidence to win the game. I knew they wouldn’t catch me.”
Bushland salvaged some dignity by putting together a scoring drive on the ensuing possession when Evan Rodriguez capped a nice drive by scoring on a 7-yard run to cut it to 25-7.
However, Trusler, as would be expected, had the last word. With 10 seconds left in the third quarter after another Bushland interception, Trusler kept it himself again and scored on a 73-yard run to make it 31-7 and end the night’s scoring.
“That’s one thing we talked about going into this game,” Read said of using Trusler. “We like to spread the ball out quite a bit. We some great receivers and running backs but we knew we had to ;put it in our playmaker’s hands for the most part to accomplish something like this.”
Playing in a four-team district, both schools, along with district rivals River Road and Shallowater, knew they were going to the playoffs before the season even began. The last three weeks of the season are for seeding, and there’s definite divide now with Dalhart and Shallowater being unbeaten and Bushland and River Road searching for their first wins.
Next week Bushland visits River Road to determine who the No. 3 seed in the playoffs will be. The Falcons will have to bounce back to make a statement and get the better seed next week.
“We’ve got to throw better, we’ve got to catch better, block better and coach better,” Reynolds said. “We’ve got to do a lot of things better that we didn’t do tonight. Some of that was us, but some of that was (the Wolves) and how they played. We’ve got to fix us and you don’t want to be fixing much this time of year.”