Jake Tumblin rushed for 233 yards and three touchdowns Friday night. (John Fisken photo)
In the end, The Bucket went back to Langley. We think.
Coupeville High School football coach Tony Maggio carried the trophy to midfield after South Whidbey had shredded Coupeville’s defense to a 57-33 tune Friday night, then, like much of the game’s action, vanished into a bank of fog, never to be seen again.
So, it’s possible Maggio sidestepped the Falcon coaches and is still running. We shall never know.
What we do know is that in what shall forever be known as the Fog Bowl, Wolf two-way star Jake Tumblin played a game for the ages.
And that, unfortunately, with Nick Streubel, their biggest, baddest defensive weapon, patrolling the sidelines on a scooter to protect an ankle hurt earlier in the week, Coupeville simply couldn’t hold Falcon quarterback Nick French down.
Tumblin was flat-out brilliant in the Homecoming loss, rushing for 233 yards and three touchdowns, hauling in three receptions and horse-whipping anyone remotely close to him on defense, piling up 16 tackles.
Along the way, he busted out runs of 49, 57 and 61 yards, with the 51-yarder coming on a fake punt where he stood completely still for several agonizing seconds, let the Falcons buy the bluff the ball was going the other way, then suddenly broke like mad for the end zone, leaving a trail of defenders grasping at nothing more than stray fog.
That put Coupeville up 13-7, and the Wolves (3-3) held close until late in the second quarter. After giving up back-to-back scores, they closed the gap to 21-19 on a five-yard run up the gut by Brett Arnold.
Then, things fell apart.
Without Streubel crashing through the line, French had way too much time to run loose and hurt the Wolves with both his feet and arm. Time and again, he found openings and exploited them as South Whidbey tacked on four more scores.
Coupeville stopped the hemorrhaging, for a moment, when Lathom Kelley ripped off a 54-yard touchdown run. Two fumble recoveries off of onside kicks and a final score by Tumblin made things interesting, but the clock was hardly a friend to the Wolves at that point and time ran away from them.
The win, which avenged a loss to the Wolves last year in Langley, lifted the Falcons to 5-2.
The game started in a dense fog, had a five minute span in the fourth when you could actually see from one side of the field to the other, then ended in the kind of creepy pea soup that Stephen King often sets his stories in.
Coupeville came out crisp, winning the coin toss, then getting a 13-yard run from quarterback Gunnar Langvold on the game’s first play. The Wolves drove to the South Whidbey 21-yard line, then stalled out and opted for a field goal attempt from Josh Bayne, which missed by just a hair.
Langvold had two sparkling passes to Wade Schaef, who topped the Wolf receivers with 68 yards. On the first one, he hit Schaef in mid-stride down the left sideline, while the second one was a bomb into the fog where no one in the stands had a clue the ball was caught until the refs emerged from the white mass that covered the field, signalling a reception.
When they did stop South Whidbey on defense, the bulk of the big hits went to Jared Dickson, Wiley Hesselgrave, Aaron Wright, Ben Haight and Oscar Liquidano.
Well, at least the stat keepers think they did. It was kind of hard to see out there.
Coupeville Sports 