“Hey was that fun?!”
The first postgame words of Garrett coach Chris Depew to his team may as well have rang for miles. The Railroaders found an opening night victory Friday, 20-7, over visiting Adams Central after holding the Flying Jets scoreless over the final three quarters.
The loss is Adams Central’s first regular season loss since 2021, a span of over 1,000 days. It is the first time the Flying Jets have lost on opening night since a 2014 setback against county rival Bellmont and the least amount of points the program has scored in a game since a 2018 semistate loss at Pioneer.
All of that could be and perhaps should be the story. The three time defending Class 1A state runner up toppled by a program that they had beaten a combined 98-14 over the past two seasons. The same Garrett program that hasn’t opened a season with a win since 2021 and hadn’t beaten Adams Central since 2013.
“It was a great momentum starter for our season. They [Adams Central] are going to do great things all year and probably get some hardware we’re looking to get hardware as well. I want people to know that we can contend with other teams too,” senior quarterback Calder Hefty said after the game.
So instead, the story will be more about what Garrett did than what Adams Central didn’t do.
And the ultimate story, the headline of the whole thing is the ‘flu game’ esque performance from the Railroader senior Hefty, who made the winning plays to push Garrett ahead and secure a 20-7 lead heading into the halftime break. That lead ultimately allowed Garrett to play with house money in the second half as they dictated tempo and ran clock on an Adams Central team who knows how to grind down a clock themselves.
Hefty’s headline performance, while spanning the entire game and both sides of the ball – he had a tough stick of a tackle in the first quarter – can be best summed up over a span of seven seconds. And while what happened next would always be eye opening, it was made more impressive but the fact that Hefty spent the end of the week partially ill after waking up Wednesday morning feeling under the weather, something that carried over even a bit into Friday morning.
With time running down in the first half and the Railroaders trailing 7-6, Hefty was pushed out of the pocket and had to make an initial scramble to stay out of trouble before finding a lane up the left sideline for the go ahead and ultimately winning score. Then, before the extra point could be attempted, Hefty went ahead and purged quite a bit of liquid from his system right out there in the middle of the field.
After a failed two-point Railroader conversion and while a not quite 100 percent Hefty was on his way to the locker room just before the half, teammate Kashen Kelham recovered the ensuing kickoff as the Adams Central returner hesitated on whether or not to let the ball go out of bounds. With the crowd erupting, Hefty rushed back from the locker room area, took the field and in one play, connected for a 30 yard touchdown to Brayden Nusbaum to put Garrett up 20-7; a score that would never change from there.
“I hear the crowd going crazy and I look back and I see the refs signal it was going our way and I just started running back. I ran back, got the play, went out there and executed,” Hefty said.
In the middle of sickness, Hefty helped lead the Railroaders to 14 points in exactly seven seconds; Garrett scoring on Hefty’s run with 21.1 seconds on the clock, with the passing score coming with 14.1 seconds left before halftime.
It was, in a way, something that legends can be made of. In such a big win, it may very well just become Garrett legend.
“I think its a huge deal the coaches believed in me. They could have just gone in there and taken a knee and been like ‘we get the ball at half, its not that big of a deal,'” Hefty said of the decision post kickoff recovery. “They trust me and I have teammates that trust me too and I went out there and delivered. Just kept my mind straight and realizing what I needed to do and not overreact to a big situation.”
The second half turned into Garrett dictating tempo and never allowing Adams Central to get very comfortable. The Railroaders converted twice in big ways during their first possession of the third quarter, turning a fourth and three into a first down near midfield and then, facing a fourth and one, Cam Ruble ran it for another Garrett first down. In fact, the Railroaders’ offense was so methodical that Adams Central didn’t touch the ball until 1:12 was left on the third quarter clock. The first Flying Jets possession of the second half didn’t last very long as Brayden Nusbaum had a big stop on third and five and then Garrett took over on downs with 11:10 left in the game after a Jamison Roach incompletion.
The next time that Adams Central got the ball, they looked like they could move it pretty well before a Levi Chaney sack on second and two played a role in forcing a Flying Jets punt with 5:42 left. The Flying Jets would get another shot to try and push a comeback when Matt Heiser converted on fourth and three with under two minutes to play. But again, the Railroaders found their way into the backfield where they made Roach work hard all night, this time with Chase Egly and Nate Wells applying the pressure to the Adams Central quarterback.
Once the Flying Jets again turned it over on downs with 16.7 seconds left, all Hefty and the Railroaders needed to do was take a knee and close out the first so-called upset of the 2024 season.
While the intensity of the game was subsiding and after coach Depew’s brief but poignant postgame speech in front of a large collective of Garrett fans, Hefty agreed with that first sentence question about having fun with a game like Friday night’s. The senior was quick to take in the moment for what it was to start his final high school campaign.
“Playing with the boys I grew up with since I was six years old, it feels great to beat a team of this caliber. Props to them because it wouldn’t be this big of a deal if they were bad. All credit to them too, they are a good football team.”
Hefty finished with 43 yards passing and 74 yards rushing, while Ruble led the Railroaders on the ground with 117 yards on 28 carries and Garrett’s first touchdown of the game.
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