EDMONDS — All night long, the Mountlake Terrace offense ran at-will against Meadowdale’s defense.

The two-headed monster of quarterback Mason Wilson (111 rushing yards, three touchdowns) and running back Owen Boswell (117 yards) combined for 228 yards on the ground. With 40 carries combined, the senior duo averaged 5.7 yards per carry. Even after Meadowdale took a 21-14 lead on the first possession of overtime at Edmonds Stadium on Friday, Wilson and Boswell each picked up around 10 yards to bring the offense inside the five. A penalty wiped Wilson’s four-yard plunge off the board, but he proceeded to truck his way to a 14-yard score right after.

Down 21-20, Mountlake Terrace coach Archie Malloy kept his offense on the field. Minutes prior, Mountlake Terrace watched its attempt for a game-winning field goal fall short as time expired in regulation. Now, it had another chance to win on the last play.

As expected, the ball stayed in Wilson’s hands on the two-point attempt, and he churned up the middle toward the goal line. Yet after all those yards gained, the Hawks (5-2 overall, 2-2 league) would fall one short of victory.

Meadowdale senior Jamier Perry wrapped Wilson up, and with support from converging teammates, downed him just short of the line. The stop secured a 21-20 overtime win and the Wesco 3A South title for the Mavericks (7-0, 4-0). The entire Meadowdale team stormed the field, half toward the student section and the other half over to Perry, who was the last to rise to his feet after putting his body on the line for the win. It marked the program’s first league title since 2016.

“When I saw him running up the middle, I knew right then and there that I got to hit him,” Perry said. “We came together on one unit, and we just brought him down.”

After finishing tied for second in 2025 and fifth in 2024, the Mavericks reached the top of the table in head coach Antwoine Gamble’s third season at the helm, knocking down the reigning league champions in the process.

“That took every ounce of togetherness,” Gamble said. “I was praying, being honest. It just took everything that the team has put together since June. The coaching staff, the players believing, and we did it for our community. Our community needed that. It just means a lot for us to be able to come out and persevere through that.”

Senior Zekiah Gamble threw for 128 yards and two touchdowns, and senior Cayden Rivera totaled 98 scrimmage yards to lead the Meadowdale offense. In addition to his 117 rushing yards, Boswell added 49 receiving yards for Mountlake Terrace, which started out in control.

The Hawks executed a 10-play, 79-yard opening drive for a touchdown as the interior offensive line opened lanes for Wilson and Boswell through the middle. Wilson’s 25-yard keeper brought possession into Mavericks territory, and a dropped direct snap to Boswell bounced back into his hands before he rumbled for 14 more yards. Wilson capped the drive with a one-yard plunge into the end zone to put Mountlake Terrace up 7-0 with 7:07 left in the first.

Meadowdale returned the ensuing kickoff to its own 40 and drove just outside the red zone, but Hawks senior Andrew McBride flipped it around with an interception on an attempted shot to the end zone. The Terrace rushing attack picked up where it left off, but a penalty stalled the drive and ultimately led to a punt. Still, the Hawks totaled 95 rushing yards in the first quarter.

The Mavericks dodged a bullet after the interception, but penalties slowed their ensuing drive as well. Zekiah Gamble hit senior Jackson Greene for a 26-yard gain over the middle to enter Mountlake Terrace territory, but a pass break-up from Wilson and a tackle-for-loss from freshman Ian Mendoza put Meadowdale in a fourth-down situation, where the defense forced an incompletion to turn it over with 7:02 left in the half.

Neither offense could gain momentum for the remainder of the second quarter as each defense held up well. The Hawks received the ball on their own 18 with 1:29 left, but could only make it to midfield before time ran out. With the score just 7-0 entering the break, it was still anyone’s game.

“We just had to come play our game, execute,” Rivera said. “All week at practice, we knew. This would be the game.”

After totaling just 56 rushing yards in the first half, the Mavericks rushed for 76 on their first drive of the third quarter. Bleeding more than six minutes off the clock with 14 consecutive run plays, Meadowdale tied it with a one-yard rush from Gamble after Rivera kept the chains moving with three rushes over 10 yards.

Given how effectively Mountlake Terrace moved the ball in the first half, the Mavericks intentionally slowed things down to try and limit the Hawks’ time of possession as much as possible.

“They’re a dynamic team, as you saw,” Antwoine Gamble said. “They can move the ball down the field really fast. They’re confident. They’re champions. They understand, so we decided to try and chew as much time as possible. It didn’t work. We went into overtime.”

Mountlake Terrace responded with a long touchdown drive of its own, taking up the rest of the third quarter and going nearly three minutes into the fourth. Wilson and Boswell kept trading carries, and two plays after Wilson baited the Meadowdale defensive line into an encroachment on 4th-and-1 at the 11, he sold a play-action fake to Boswell up the middle and rolled out right for a five-yard rushing touchdown.

The Mavericks stuck to their strategy, taking more than eight minutes off the clock on a 17-play, 57-yard drive that included two fourth-down conversions from Rivera and junior Alexander Wilson, respectively. After Boswell recorded a tackle-for-loss to push Meadowdale back from the goal line to the three, Zekiah Gamble found senior Owen Fulford over the middle to tie it 14-14 with 59 seconds left.

“We just needed to come out firing and doing our jobs, and we’ll be there,” Rivera said about improving the rushing attack in the second half.

Despite starting on their own 17 with 52 seconds left, the Hawks managed to get all the way to the Mavericks’ 20 with five seconds left, needing all three timeouts and multiple runs out of bounds. Junior Trey Marshall and Boswell executed a 24-yard hook-and-lateral to get into Meadowdale territory, and 15-yard personal foul penalty against the defense on the next play moved the ball up even further.

However, their chance to win on a walk-off field goal fell just short of the crossbar, sending the game to overtime.

“We knew kind of lining up that it wasn’t over,” Perry said. “It’s never over until the final whistle. Until we knew that that ball was either up or down, we were going to fight no matter what.”

The Mavericks received the first possession in overtime, and after their first two plays gained no yards, Zekiah Gamble connected with senior Jack Baker down the right sideline for a 25-yard touchdown. Senior Holden Johnson’s extra point pushed it to 21-14.

“That wasn’t just a ‘me’ play. That was an ‘everybody’ play,” Baker said. “It comes from the blocking, the route selling from (junior Taylor) Brown, the execution of the throw from Zekai Gamble. Yeah, I caught the ball, but that was a team effort right there.”

After the offense did its part, the defense contributed theirs with the two-point stop to win the game. With a league title in-hand, Meadowdale hopes to accomplish even more when the postseason rolls around.

“We continue to push each other, guaranteed,” Rivera said. “We got more to prove.”