In a fitting end to an illustrious career, Scales exploded for a 63-yard score that lifted Harvard over Yale for the 11th time in 12 years.

Senior running back Treavor Scales couldn’t sleep. He was normally sound asleep by 10 o’clock the night before games, but this time was different. As the hours ticked away before Scales’ final collegiate contest in The Game, all he could do was stare at the ceiling.

The night before, the Georgia native explained the importance of the game during the team’s senior speeches.

“At six seconds per play, you got about 60 plays out there,” Scales remembers telling his team. “That’s six minutes of actual playing time you’ve got left in your career. Use those six minutes to the fullest.”

Thinking about those six minutes kept Scales up until around midnight, and he was back awake by 6 a.m. on the cool November morning, raring to go. The stakes for the day were clear.

The Game would be his perfect stage. In front of 30,000 fans stuffing Harvard Stadium and many more watching the national television broadcast, Scales and the Crimson would take on Yale, led by former Harvard assistant Tony Reno.

Scales had functioned mainly as a third-down option during his first two seasons before serving in a rotation with then-freshman Zach Boden in 2011. His senior year was the only time he served as the workhorse back he always wanted to be, and though he started the year strongly, his production had tapered off as the season neared its end.

In the five weeks prior to The Game, the Crimson had lost its spot atop the Ivy League, going 3-2 as Scales averaged just over 60 yards and gained 90 yards only once, in a devastating loss to Princeton. Scales now had one final chance to establish his Harvard legacy.

Leading up to kickoff, there was a lot on Scales’ mind.

“It was pandemonium,” Scales says. “All kind of butterflies…. It was almost rattling.”

Scales recalls hoping that everything would go right in his final Crimson chapter. It didn’t. He accrued just 13 yards in the first quarter and entered halftime with fewer than 40 yards. Both offenses struggled in what was a 3-3 stalemate after 30 minutes.

Scoring opened up in the second half, but Scales wasn’t the one making things happen. In the third quarter, he only had five carries and only gained more than four yards on one of them.

He finally got things going in the fourth quarter. Back-to-back-to-back handoffs to Scales on the Crimson’s first possession of the fourth quarter netted Harvard 25 yards and set up a play-action touchdown pass on the following play.

Then the ball was taken out of Scales’ hands. He got just one touch over the next eight and a half minutes as the Bulldogs and Crimson battled back and forth, each grabbing the lead only to surrender it back.

At that point, it was unclear how many more active seconds of Harvard football Scales had left.

“I just wanted a shot,” Scales recalls. “Inside my head I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to get my shot more than anything. As soon as they do hand me this ball, I’m going to make something happen.’”