Clay-Battelle running back Sean Hays rushes for one of his three touchdowns against Valley Wetzel on Friday. The Cee-Bees won, 27-20, in overtime. (Shelby Thoburn/The Dominion Post) 
Clay-Battelle running back Carson Shriver runs the ball against Valley Wetzel on Friday. 
Clay-Battelle running back Carson Shriver had 155 yards rushing on 10 carries Friday. 
Cee-Bees’ Carson Shriver caught two passes for 41 yards on Friday. 
Clay-Battelle receiver Seth Casino races up field after making a catch Friday. 
Clay-Battelle’s Daniel Gorbey returns a kickoff on Friday.
BLACKSVILLE, W.Va. — Sean Hays had the touchdowns. Carson Shriver had the yards.
Skylar Howard had THE tackle, one that led to Clay-Battelle’s wild 27-20 overtime victory against Valley-Wetzel on Friday, in a game that had more twists and turns than a daytime soap opera.
Truth be told, Howard is a good story for the Cee-Bees (2-1). The 250-pound sophomore just came out for football for the first time this season and played sparingly early on.
“I’m not sure he played at all in our last game,” said Hays, who rushed for 70 yards and three touchdowns, including the 4-yard run in overtime to win the game. “For him to come in and play as hard as he did tonight, that was really big for us.”
But as Valley’s 265-pound offensive-lineman-turned-running-back Wyatt Dallison (33 carries for 127 yards and two scores) kept methodically pounding through the middle of the Cee-Bees’ line, Howard was rotated in at nose guard to try and add more size to push back.
“Coaches kept telling me to cut the center and that’s what I was focused on,” Howard said. “I got piled up on a couple of times. I got kicked in the leg a few other times. It all feels good now after the win.”
Trailing, 20-13 in the third quarter, Hays stripped Valley’s Gavin Streets of the ball to force a turnover and then Shriver scored on a 64-yard run to tie the game.
Neither team scored in the fourth quarter, although the Lumberjacks (0-3) drove to the Clay-Battelle 16-yard line in the final seconds of regulation.
Facing a fourth-and-5, the Lumberjacks elected to run for the first down rather than attempt a 33-yard field goal.
Streets, who added 98 yards rushing on 19 carries, was held to a three-yard gain and the Cee-Bees ran out the remaining seconds to send the game into overtime.
“I wasn’t really sure what the overtime rules were,” Hays said. “All I knew is that I wanted the ball.”
The senior got it on four straight carries to give C-B a 27-20 lead.
That set up Howard and a Clay-Battelle defense that pitched a shutout in the second half after giving up three touchdowns on three Valley-Wetzel possessions in the first half.
“We tried so many different schemes on defense and we kept rotating guys in and out,” C-B head coach Ryan Wilson said. “We couldn’t get much to work in the first half. The second half, we came up with some big plays. The fumble was big. Stopping them on fourth down (in regulation) was big. We started blitzing more in the second half. We had to start taking some chances.”
Dallison, who wears No. 74 and also doubles as a defensive lineman, was a man of near-perfect consistency, constantly gaining three and four yards and moving the chains for first downs.
“He was a load,” Hays said. “It really hurt when he fell on you, too.”
But now it was overtime and the Lumberjacks faced a fourth-and-three at the C-B 13 and needed seven points to send the game into a second overtime.
Dallison got the call again.
Howard was there to clog up the hole, before Hays and Bryan Enoff came in to clean up the play.
Dallison was held to just a 1-yard gain. Game over.
“That was Skylar’s tackle,” Hays said.
“We all knew it was going to be a run,” Howard added. “I just tried to do what my coaches kept telling me. That play got piled up pretty quick, so I figured we had stopped him.”
Shriver led the Cee-Bees with 155 yards on just 10 carries. He exited the game in the fourth quarter with a leg injury, but Wilson said he expected Shriver would play next week.
Howard just may have earned some more playing time, too.
“Skylar is a kid, who in August, we didn’t see him as a starter,” Wilson said. “He kept working and kept impressing us. He’s a guy we thought would progress and maybe be a kid who would help us by the third or fourth game. He made some tough plays out there for us tonight.”
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