Will Cavanagh had just one more thing to do in the middle of the emotion last Friday night.

The football stadium at Williamsburg had turned into a loud frenzy. Raider students charged onto the field after time ran out on Williamsburg’s 24-21 victory.

Mid-Prairie head coach Pete Cavanagh had finished talking to his team.

He walked around the field, probably replaying the whole darn thing in his mind, play by play, minute by minute.

And just then, his son, senior quarterback Will Cavanagh, walked over to him and the two hugged tightly.

Right then, you knew exactly how much this game meant to the Golden Hawks, and certainly to the Cavanagh family.

The last time the Golden Hawks defeated Williamsburg, in 2009, Pete Cavanagh was head coach. The Golden Hawks won that game, 21-19. Will Cavanagh would have been in kindergarten back then. How could he possibly know?

And that was the last time, until Friday night, when Mid-Prairie really took a shot at the Raiders. The Golden Hawks lost by 34 points in Will Cavanagh’s freshman year. They lost by 36 points the year before. They were shut out in 2015 and again in 2016.

A rivalry? Pete Cavanagh suggested to me before the season began that a rivalry only becomes a rivalry when both teams win.

“A rivalry, yeah,” Pete said back in August, “but a rivalry only works if you’re winning both sides. That’s not happening right now.”

And that is spot on.

Will Cavanagh, who passed for a game-high 208 yards and ran for a team-high 90 yards, played a huge part in actually feeding that rivalry Friday night.

“He played well. I’m very proud of him,” Pete Cavanagh said of his son.

But Will wasn’t alone.

Every play was a fight for inches. Mid-Prairie senior Justice Jones fought through three Raider players after making a catch and nearly dragging them into the end zone. He scored a touchdown later and had a game-high 10 tackles. Offensive and defensive linemen fought for those inches with determination, especially after senior lineman Gannon Callahan hit the ground with an injury in the game’s early moments.

“We had some guys step up at receiver,” Pete Cavanagh said. “Our line held up for the most part against a blitzing defense. I thought they were awesome. I thought everybody played great tonight, I really do.”

Will Cavanagh passed for three touchdowns. He led the Golden Hawks downfield on virtually every possession in the first half, including the first one when he ran 26 yards for a first down and completed a long pass to Jones.

Cavanagh threw scoring strikes of 7 yards to Jarrett Hoffman and 17 yards to Jones in the second quarter.

He chopped up the usually iron-clad Williamsburg defense so effectively that the Raiders trailed 14-3 at halftime, and were fortunate to only be down 11 points.

Yardage become tougher in the second half. The Raiders rose up and held Mid-Prairie to pair of three-and-outs to begin the third quarter. But after Williamsburg went ahead 17-14 early in the fourth quarter, Cavanagh threw a scoring pass to Jack Pennington to put the Golden Hawks ahead, 21-17.

In the final two minutes of the game, and Mid-Prairie trailing 24-21, Cavanagh led a Mid-Prairie attack from its own 20-yard line to the Williamsburg 9. An incomplete pass on fourth down in the end zone finally ended it.

And now the rivalry will be left to another group of Golden Hawks next year.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.