Tanner Dunivan dressed in the Dallas Cowboys locker room, walked onto the field at the massive AT&T Stadium and played one more game of high school football Monday night.
"Walking in there and everything is a little intimidating," the Poplar Bluff senior said of the 100,000-seat stadium in Arlington, Texas.
"Once the game lights came on it was all seriousness and didn't matter where I was."
Dunivan played linebacker in the Blue-Grey All-American Bowl, making two tackles as his East team beat the West 28-17.
Dunivan got an invitation after first being invited to a super combine over the summer.
"I guess they just saw something in me that they liked in the combines and wanted me to come to the game," Dunivan said.
This past fall Dunivan helped the Mules to their third unbeaten, untied regular season in program history with 98 total tackles, including 16 for a loss with three sacks. He forced three fumbles, recovered one and intercepted a pass.
An outside linebacker, Dunivan had a similar roll in a familiar defense with teammates he just met two days earlier.
"It wasn't hard at all actually," Dunivan said. "We got to know each other pretty well within the first day or so. There were actually a lot of cool guys on there. We talked like we were on a regular high school team."
His fellow linebackers were from nine different states including Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio.
Dunivan was one of four players from Missouri to play. The others were from Waynesville, St. Clair, St. Charles Lutheran and Park Hill.
Jackson offensive lineman Owen Leible played in the Dec. 18 game, the first of four games played in either Dallas, Jacksonville or Tampa Bay.
"It was a really good experience," Dunivan said. "It was a lot of fun."
Dunivan's linebacker coach was also the head coach in George Teague. A nine-year NFL player, Teague played for the Packers, Dolphins and Cowboys after helping the University of Alabama win a national title in 1992.
Now a head football coach at a high school in Plano, Texas, Teague is remember in Dallas for shoving 49ers wide receiver Terrell Owens off the midfield star logo while celebrating a touchdown in a 2000 game at the old Texas Stadium.
"He told us about that," Dunivan said. "He was talking about consequences and how he thought about it before he went out there but said it was worth it."
Dunivan's family, his parents, sister and grandmother, were able to make the near 8-hour drive with him but it meant missing the SEMO Conference wrestling tournament. Dunivan won the 170-pound title last season. The long trip back also meant Dunivan, 17-5 this season, missed wrestling in his final home match Tuesday.
"It was a little rough," Dunivan said of the decision. "I won conference last year so they were expecting me to do the same this year, but I think this was the better experience. It was a good excuse to miss, it was once in a lifetime."
That experience started at one of 22 combines around the country. Dunivan was then invited to one of the five "super combines" on June 24-25 at AT&T Stadium.
He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.92 seconds, completed the shuttle run in 4.61 seconds and cleared 8-feet, 8-inches in the board jump. Out of the 25 linebackers, Dunivan had the third-longest jump and 11th-fastest 40 time.
After driving Friday night to reach Dallas by Saturday morning, Dunivan said there was a practice that afternoon at an area high school and one Sunday before a walk-through Monday prior to the game.
"They ran kind of a base formation, it was what we run here, the 4-3," he said. "I played outside (linebacker) and I kind of played weakside. Really not much came over that way but you just had to fight for tackles."
Dunivan said he had a solo tackle stopping a run in the middle.
"I seen him coming and I just got a good line on him," he said.
The highlight, Dunivan said, was celebrating the win.
"Afterwards we jumped in there and dumped the buckets on the coaches," he added. "It was fun. It was a really good experience. It was a lot of fun."
Dunivan has not decided on his plans after high school but thinks playing the game "probably open a couple of doors" to play at the collegiate level.
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The game will be broadcast online at 4 p.m. Thursday at impactfootballnetwork.com.