Tumwater football looks stronger than ever with 54-14 win over Columbia River
Through the first four weeks of the high school football season, Tumwater looked every bit the state’s best team in the 2A classification.
Well, it appears the Thunderbirds are even better now.
Tumwater welcomed back its top two offensive weapons in Easton Trakel and Griffin Shea on Friday and proceeded to run over visiting Columbia River, getting four rushing touchdowns from Jarid Barrett and a pair of scores on the ground from Shea in a 54-14 victory over the Chieftains in a non-league matchup at Tumwater District Stadium.
“It’s nice to finally have No. 15 (Trakel) and No. 37 (Shea) back on the field for us,” said Tumwater coach Sid Otton. “We’re a different team with them. We didn’t really use them too much tonight, but it’s nice to have them back.”
Trakel, absent from Tumwater’s first four games after being sidelined by a strained hamstring, wasn’t asked to do much in his season debut, finishing with 34 yards on four carries.
However, the speedy senior’s talents may not have even been needed in dismantling Columbia River as the T-Birds looked sharp on both sides of the ball.
“Tonight was a total team effort,” Otton said. “I was really pleased with how the younger players stepped up when (Trakel and Shea) were out. It made us a better team.”
Barrett scored on runs 5, 6, 11 and 1 yards, while Shea, who suffered a concussion in the team’s second game and missed the previous two contests, scampered in from 6 and 23 yards out, helping the T-Birds (5-0) post a 48-7 lead at the half.
The contest wasn’t even nine minutes old and Tumwater enjoyed a 28-7 cushion.
The T-Birds wasted little time putting the ball into Trakel’s hands, getting runs of 7 and 6 yards out of him on their first two plays.
Trakel later hauled in a 40-yard reception from Spencer Dowers to set up Barrett’s 5-yard touchdown run, igniting the rout.
A defensive score came next when Trayten Rodriguez pushed the advantage to two scores after scooping up a Chieftains fumble and rumbling 15 yards for a TD.
Columbia River (2-3) was able to halt the bleeding momentarily on Garrett McKee’s 71-yard touchdown toss to Alex McGarry. Tumwater defensive back Jacob Crawford was able to get a hand on McKee’s pass, but instead of an interception he tipped the ball right into the hand’s of the streaking McGarry, who raced untouched to the end zone to cut the Chieftains deficit in half 14-7.
Columbia River would not get any closer.
Shea and Barrett each chipped in 6-yard touchdown runs to close out the scoring in the first quarter.
Barrett added his third score two minutes into the second quarter and his fourth with 3 1/2 minutes left in the half, leading to Tumwater running out the clock in the second half.
This story was originally published October 2, 2015 at 10:15 PM with the headline "Tumwater football looks stronger than ever with 54-14 win over Columbia River."