Dayton-Yerington football game comes down to improbable ending

A typical Dayton-Yerington football game came down to an improbable ending.

The Dust Devils fake extra point attempt into the winning two-point conversion in overtime for a 22-21 victory Friday at home.

"It was the ultimate in high school football," said Dayton assistant coach Shannon Wines, who has been a part of the Dayton-Yerington rivalry for 16 years as a head coach and assistant.

Jeff Miller hit Matt Sumpsion in the corner of the end zone on the winning two-point conversion for Dayton (3-6).

Yerington called timeout before the two-point attempt and Lion Coach Cody Neville said he told his team to watch for the fake, but to no avail.

Yerington (1-8) scored on the second play of its opening drive in overtime on Josh Allen's touchdown run to take a 21-14 lead.

"It was a heartbreaker, that's for sure," Yerington Coach Cody Neville said. "We wanted to get this win pretty bad."

Shane Van Zant responded with a scoring run on Dayton's first overtime drive.

Neville said it was a bitter pill to swallow for his seniors, many of whom he has coached for eight years.

"We were a pretty close group," he said. "It was hard to see them go out on a loss like that."

But Neville said it was still an enjoyable season. "We started the season with 24 players and we ended the season with 24 players," he said.

Dayton scored on its opening drive to take a 6-0 lead on a touchdown pass from Genaro Coronado to Marc Nelson. Yerington came back to take a 14-6 halftime lead on touchdown runs of 17 and 7 yards by Tom Sceirini.

But Van Zant set up his own TD run late in the third quarter with a punt return inside the Yerington 20-yard line. Van Zant then ran it in for the two-pointer to tie the score 14-14.