Paine passes 2,000 rushing yards for career as T-Birds escape Yelm with a win

Don’t let the flash and pretty moves fool you — Dylan Paine is a workhorse running back. He’s a freight train disguised as a Ferrari.

Paine showed just how true that is after rushing for 189 yards and two touchdowns on a gaudy 29 carries in Tumwater’s hard-fought 17-14 nonleague road victory over a tough Yelm squad on Friday.

Faced with a fourth-and-2 and trailing with less than nine minutes remaining in the game, the second-ranked T-Birds put the ball in Paine’s hands and he delivered, breaking a few arm tackles and racing 34 yards for his second touchdown of the night to produce the game’s final score.

“He was a warrior today,” Tumwater coach Bill Beattie said of the 5-foot-10, 180-pound Paine. “He was great tonight and so was our offensive line who gutted it out. That was a hard-fought game.”

With his performance, Paine, who also scored on a 3-yard run early in the third quarter to push the T-Birds’ advantage to 10-0, surpassed 2,000 rushing yards for his career, needing just 16 games to accomplish the feat.

As it turned out Tumwater (2-0) needed every single one of Paine’s yards against the Tornados, who had a great opportunity late in the contest to pick up the win.

Spearheaded by Kyle Robinson’s 52-yard completion to Austin Osso, Yelm had a second-and-goal from the 2 with two minutes remaining, but an illegal procedure penalty pushed the ball back 5 yards. Robinson was unable to hook up with Osso on the following play, after Tumwater’s Kyle Mancillas batted the potential game-winning pass down in the end zone.

Yelm (1-1) put its kicking unit on the field, but was unable to find the equalizer as the Tumwater defense tipped Gendron Peyton’s 23-yard field goal attempt.

It marked the third time in the game the Tornados advanced to the T-Birds’ red zone and were turned away empty handed.

“They battled, but we were on own worst enemy at times,” Yelm coach Jason Ronquillo said. “The penalties killed us and the timing of the penalties were just horrendous. Third-and-2 on the goal line. We had QB wedge and then a lineman jumps. It cost us. Championship teams can’t have those kinds of penalties, and we paid for it.”

Osso hauled in a touchdown pass in the third quarter from backup Ben Hoffman to give Yelm a 14-10 lead. Earlier, Robinson hit a streaking Kodee Gifford on a 65-yard touchdown pass on the Tornados’ first play following Paine’s first touchdown run, which cut the deficit to 10-7.

On Yelm’s next possession, Robinson hobbled off the field with an apparent ankle injury and in stepped Hoffman, who proceeded to throw a textbook 30-yard fade to Osso to give Yelm the lead.

After a scoreless first quarter, which saw both teams turn the ball over, Tumwater came up with the only points of the first half on Reid Little’s 25-yard field goal with eight minutes to play in the second quarter.

The T-Birds converted a pair of fourth-down conversations during the scoring drive, both thanks to the legs of Paine, who ran for 5 yards on a fourth-and-3 at midfield before popping off a 28-yard run on fourth-and-4 which placed the ball at the Yelm 5.

The drive stalled after that, opting Beattie to kick the field goal.

“Hats off to our kids. They just kept their heads down and kept going,” Beattie said. “The coaching staff did a good job. Yelm’s a great football team and we got out of here. It was a tough game.”

This story was originally published September 7, 2018 at 11:22 PM.