VERMILLION — The Statue of Liberty play will live in Watertown High School football lore. 

The Watertown Arrows edged Pierre, 14-13, in a Class 11AA slugfest at the DakotaDome on Friday. The teams traded punches all night, and Watertown dialed up the Statue of Liberty play to knock off the seven-time Class 11AA state champs. 

“We threw that in this week,” said Watertown senior Spencer Wientjes, who scored on the trick play. “It was kind of like a last-minute thing.” 

Veteran Watertown coach John Hodorff said it was the first time the Arrows have ever run the play, and it was offensive coordinator Brandon Hooth’s call. 

“We practiced it a few times all week and it came in handy in that situation,” Hodorff said. 

The Eastern South Dakota Conference foes were knotted up at 7-7 with just over four minutes left. Facing a 4th and 1 at Pierre’s 24-yard line, Watertown rolled the dice and went with the trick play. 

“We know they were probably going to try to play pass, and if we were looking one way that there wasn’t going to be anybody backside,” Hodorff said. “When you hand it to Spencer, there’s always a chance he’s going to break it and score anyway. We were going to give it to him no matter what the play was anyway.” 

Watertown’s Treyton Himmerich took the shotgun snap, faked a throw with his right hand and handed the ball off to Wientjes with his left hand behind his back. Wientjes, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound running back, got around the edge and saw enough space in the open field. 

“We’ve run the same three plays the whole game and so we were just kind of switching it up,” Wientjes said. “Giving the O-line a little bit more time to block and they sealed that edge. It was green grass from there.” 

But Wientjes still had a defender to beat to reach the end zone.  

“(Pierre defender) George Stalley was the one chasing me down,” Wientjes said. “So I was like ‘I gotta go. I know this dude is fast.’ That’s why I gave that leap at the end of the end zone. I had to make it is what I was thinking.”

Despite the momentum-changing play, Watertown still had work to do on defense. 

“I didn’t even really think about the touchdown,” Wientjes said. “I started thinking about how we are going to stop them now. Because there were still three-and-half minutes left in the game. Our defense had to come back out on the field.”

Watertown then stopped Pierre short on a two-point conversion after the Governors scored on their next scoring drive. 

“You know that Pierre is going to try to get it down the field and score and they did,” Hodorff said. “They got it all the way down and put it in the end zone on us and then we got a big stop on the two-point conversion.”