By Mike Phillips, Corsicana Daily Sun
DAWSON -- The jokes were flying higher than footballs Friday night in the Dawson locker room, where a feel-good wave filled the room just like the Bulldogs had filled up the end zone all night, scoring seven touchdowns in a wild and crazy 46-35 win over Rio Vista on opening night at Ed Mitchell Field.
Legendary coach Jimmy Thompson, who is in his second year at Dawson and his 33rd in football, couldn't help from smiling and joking around after a game that was just plain good-old-fashion fun to win.
"Look at my offensive coordinator strutting around," Thompson cracked. "He's bragging about how we're averaging 46 points a game this year."
Of course, Thompson, who won his 251st game to open the 2022 season, was just having fun. His offensive coordinator is his son, Cash Thompson, and Cash wasn't strutting. He was sitting down, catching his breath and catching a break.
"We're all worn out after that one. We all feel like we played," said Jimmy Thompson, pointing to his coaches. "That was a heck of a game."
One Dawson fan, who happens to be the mother of Dawson QB Brant Boatright, put it another way.
"That was an amazing game," she said. "Just amazing!"
How about this key statistic: The Bulldogs had only 17 players Friday.
"We thought we had 20," Thompson said, "but one kid had COVID and two other kids were out with an illness. The (17) showed up to play."
Played and played and played in a wild game that the Dawgs simply refused to lose.
"This was a whole lot more fun than our first game last year," Thompson said.
Dawson started slow last year, but Thompson's Dawgs put together a three-game winning streak in the district race and made it to the playoffs (it was Dawson's fourth consecutive playoff appearance).
The Bulldogs came back this summer with high hopes and a new offense that promised to throw the ball more with Boatright, a freshman quarterback who led Dawson to the 7-on-7 state tournament this summer for the first time in the program's history.
And now they have a thrilling, emotional win to ignite the new season.
Speaking of starts, how about Colby Springer's 87-yard run that started the fun and gave the Dawgs a 6-0 lead? After that, it was tag-you're-it back and forth for the rest of the night.
Rio Vista went up 14-6 but Isaac Johnson's 30-yard run closed the gap to 14-12 and when Rio scored again to make it 21-12 Jace Johnson caught a 30-yard pass from Boatright and Cade Onstott ran for the two-point conversion to close to 21-20. The Dawgs finally re-took the lead when Onstott raced 70 yards for a TD and Boatright hit Hastin Easley with a two-point pass to make it 28-21 at halftime.
Whew!
Then Micah McCall broke free for a 60-yard touchdown run to start the second half with a 34-21 lead -- and the Bulldogs were gone, never looking back and racing full speed to a 1-0 start.
They added a touchdown in the third when Jackson Onstott grabbed a fumble and took it 45 yards for a 40-21 lead, and scored their final touchdown on a Cade Onstott 4-yard run (after Johnson's long run to the 4) to go up 46-28 to complete the incredible start.
Then came the jokes and the laughter in the locker room.
Dawson will try to keep the touchdowns and jokes coming next Friday when the Dawgs face a big test at Leon.