MERIDIAN — Timberline didn’t let Meridian have too much fun at its homecoming game.
As a program that has struggled mightily in recent years, the Wolves entered Friday night’s game with an underdog mentality. In the last two years, Timberline has just one win combined.
After defeating Meridian, they’re already at three wins this season, and they have an extremely confident group moving forward.
The Wolves slowed and controlled the game in the second half. The Warriors had only two drives in the half and couldn’t dig themselves out of the hole they fell in. Timberline won 21-13 in the Southern Idaho Conference Foothills Division opener at Meridian High School.
“That game against Boise is tough,” Timberline head coach Ian Smart said. “A game we could have easily folded after, like it’s the same old stuff. A testament to these kids, they show up and play a battle-tested team and come into their house on homecoming and make magic happen.”
Last week, Timberline (3-1, 1-0 SIC Foothills) surrendered a lead late in the fourth quarter to Boise. This time around, the Wolves made sure history didn’t repeat itself. On fourth-and-5 from midfield with around two minutes to play, the Wolves could have punted the ball back to Meridian (1-3, 0-1 SIC Foothills), which used up all its timeouts, with an eight-point lead.
Instead, Smart put the ball in the hands of his two best players to go win the game. Quarterback Jack Brant hit wide receiver Hudson Lewis along the sideline for a contested catch in double coverage. Lewis stayed in bounds for the first down, sealing the win.
“My coaches and quarterbacks believed in me,” Lewis said. “Go make a play in double coverage. When I saw the ball up, I knew I had to end this game.”
It wasn’t the only gutsy fourth-down call Smart made in the game. Late in the second quarter, the Wolves faced a fourth down inside their own 10-yard line. Brant, who is Timberline’s punter, lined up to punt the ball away. But on the play, he threw to one of the gunners for a first down, backed up on his own goal line.
While the drive didn’t result in points, the Wolves managed to move the ball farther down the field, bleed out most of the first-half clock, and pinned Meridian in its own territory.
“I was surprised when he called that,” Brant said. “Once I saw the coverage, I knew that we had it and I had full confidence he was going to catch it.”
It’s another sign of how confident Timberline has been playing this season.
“Sometimes you have to take risks and let your kids be the stars,” Smart said. “Fourth-and-5 at the end of the game, we could’ve easily punted and given it back to them. I believed in our kids. Hudson Lewis makes a catch, that’s a circus-level catch. In that situation to have that kind of catch, that kind of throw, it speaks volumes to who they are.”
On offense, Brant, Lewis and running back Brody Engroff spearheaded the attack. While the offense only put up 21 points, they controlled the clock and never went three-and-out. Timberline led 7-0 at the end of the first half. Brant hit Lewis on a 1-yard swing pass late in the first quarter for the game’s first touchdown.
There were only five drives total in the second half. Both the Wolves and Meridian scored on two, with the final drive being the one that iced the game for Timberline.
The Wolves began the half with a scoring drive that lasted almost five minutes, ending in a 33-yard touchdown catch by Lewis to make it 14-0. Meridian’s offense woke up, reaching the red zone for the first time and scoring with quarterback Zeke Martinez hitting Lane Waldron on a 5-yard TD.
Timberline made it a two-score game again in the fourth quarter, finding Engroff on a 9-yard TD. Martinez drove the Warriors down the field again for his second touchdown of the night, a 6-yard pass to Holden Coy. They trailed 21-13 after the extra point was missed.
Meridian kicked the ball away with 4:42 remaining and never saw it again.
“We limited them to two or three tries in the second half,” Smart said. “To keep our defense off the field, that’s what we talked about. That would be the winning formula, to keep Zeke on the sideline and grind the game down.”
Brant made play after play on third downs all night long, whether it was scrambling for a first down or hitting an open receiver with the pass rush in his face.
It was a performance and win that has breathed life into a Timberline program starving for success.
“We’ve been rebuilding and working so hard,” Brant said. “To have an upset like that, gives our team so much motivation to keep going. It’s hard when we don’t have that many guys. This motivates them to keep pushing.”
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