Hillsboro 29, Festus 28

We grow tired of High School teams who can’t get to the next level and stay there, or at least the ones who appear to have quit trying in the midst of sunny days. It’s hard to remember now, but 15 years ago, the Gateway Tech Jaguars were considered a Godzilla, a bear for any Class 4 crew in the playoffs to tackle. These days, the incomplete Jags’ lineups are only a good measuring stick for C1 contenders like Crystal. It’s an old story. Nonetheless, we hope and pray to see some public-school bid establish real power and keep it intact.

Hillsboro has done it. Oh, Lordy, the Hillsboro Hawks have done it. Friday night’s come-from-behind win over rival Festus High School gives HHS a streak of achievements that may never have been surpassed in all of Jefferson County football legend. 4 championships in 2 seasons, a first pair of back-to-back postseason crowns in the new “District Tournament” era (see down for a crash course), and a 16-0 run versus Mississippi Conference opposition since midseason of 2020, or nearly 20 wins and only a single loss to North County if you count playoff games in. Hillsboro has beaten Festus “in all competitions” – to borrow from soccer slang in the honor of PK Nick Marchetti – every single time except twice since Blake Goddard was a youngster with the Varsity Tigers, putting the skipper Coach Bill Sucharski and his predecessor Lee Freeman in a rare rivalry-series class of their own at Leon Hall. Hillsboro’s gotten into the State Playoff bracket-of-8 in consecutive years for what The Geek _thinks_ may be Hillsboro’s first ever time to do so, and the Hawks are poised to be in the Final Four of this season’s Class 4 championship bracket – further than last year – faster than you can say “Pacific upset Sullivan on Friday.”

Don’t label this year’s Hillsboro championship just a “comeback victory,” though. It wouldn’t give the Festus Tigers enough credit, and more critically, it wouldn’t give HILLSBORO enough credit for Week 12’s nose-grinder of a win at Leon Hall. Mississippi Magazine will be accused of trying to “hide” the fact that Festus blew a 21-point lead to the Hillsboro Hawks, but the Varsity Hawks’ amazing second half wouldn’t be so great if FHS had simply laid an egg. Festus was still bringing heaps to the table in the 3rd and 4th quarter. Bravely, the Blue & White found a way.

It’s more like Hillsboro did the impossible, as a sizable early Festus lead and Midmeadow Lane’s momentum from the opening snap served to tee-up RB Hayden Bates in exactly the way that The Geek predicted. helping the senior rack-up what looked to be 150-200 rushing yards against the stout Varsity Hawks. Jeremiah Cunningham’s bomb for a TD on the scrum’s second play-from-scrimmage served to get Hillsboro’s defense right on its back foot, and Festus set the tone for the 2nd half by stopping HHS cold, then leaning on a 14-point edge with more Bates. But considering that we said the ONE thing Hillsboro could not do is give Festus a substantial halftime lead and yet prevail in the championship clash, and thinking about the drama of Chase Sucharski’s heroic catch with 5:30 left, and Hillsboro’s successful gamble to go for a winning 2-point play, it feels wrong to describe Hillsboro’s massive victory in “standard” 4th-Quarter-Comeback terms. HHS made history by going above and beyond that stuff.

Student-athletes know there’s a Yin-and-Yang to the headlines they read about themselves. Calling the Hawks’ gutsy, grudging 48:00 triumph an “unheard-of 4th quarter rally!” or something like that would make Hillsboro one of the only MSHSAA teams to “John Tyler Lions” their way to repeat District championships. But it wouldn’t tell the real story, which puts Blue & White in a unique class of their own as never-say-die contenders. Would our own local “Hoosiers,” Week 13’s incredible Crystal City Hornets, take TGG’s praise to heart if he’d written the following:

Crystal City Debuts Hot New Offense In 0-6 Loss Vs Herculaneum 

CCHS Hornets Kick All Kinds Of Ass In Vandalia, Lose To Indians 14 to 6 

Sunken Place Seniors Show Generosity, Hand Out Free Footballs at Louisiana High

Not to mention, a “magic comeback” story often just results in a hangover a bit later on. Like this one:

Hillsboro never won the line-of-scrimmage on Friday. Never got the Hawks’ patented option game working well, either. Preston Brown was in 3rd-and-10 as often as Cole Rickermann during the former Festus phenom’s District championship run. That didn’t change much as FHS won the early minutes of the 3rd quarter. Hillsboro, in the type of performance which JUST MIGHT turn the trick against a Lutheran North or Cardinal Ritter type of opponent in 2023’s upcoming Class 4 state playoffs, simply made one courageous individual play after another to make up Midmeadow Lane’s edge and get to a 7 point nail-biter in the final frame. Hillsboro’s key late interception (well, both of them) and the subsequent winning TD + conversion also highlighted the top thing HHS’s defense did all night long, which was to prevent Landen Yates and the vaunted FHS receiving corps from doing much at all in the passing game following the big early TD. Cunningham and Essien Smith each finished well below 50%.

Bill Sucharski outcoached A.J. Ofodile again, up, down, and sideways. Hillsboro was more disciplined and drew less penalty flags, outside of a checked blitz on 4th down that let Cunningham pitch a 50-yard missile into the end zone, and draw the game’s final flag on Pass Interference to set up a Tiger 2:00 drill to dream of at the 25-yard line. But strangely enough, both HCs appeared to cast their teams as the underdog – in their own minds – as the contest wound forward. Hillsboro thought it might not grace the Red Zone again after scoring to draw within 1 point at Friday’s 5-minute mark, thus Sucharski’s call to go for a glorious 2-point conversion that the Hawks wrestled in. Mississippi Magazine couldn’t help but think of the time the former Hillsboro assistant coach Russ Schmidt did essentially the same thing, against Cape Girardeau Central in a massive Week 1 kickoff that was broadcast on CBS affiliates in 4 states in 2011. Schmidt’s gamble didn’t work, but Sucharski’s decision made all the difference in 2023. Meanwhile, the opposing FHS coach’s team blew a golden opportunity to drive and score for a 35-14 lead in the penultimate quarter when Hayden Bates’ easy 1st Down turned into a foul 15-yard penalty at midfield. Coach O, in possibly his worst move of 4 seasons, kicked over the game board with a 4th-and-15 pass attempt, and several useless time-outs in the 3rd quarter, before the scrum was likely to be decided in the first place. If Ofodile will continue to expect the Tigers not to play like they’re losing by 14 when they’re actually beating Hillsboro by 2 touchdowns, then he’s got to follow that rule himself, not give HHS hope by acting like HE’s the underdog.

We hope that Ofodile’s “calls he would like to have back” (in his own words on Regional Radio) include those 4th downs and special-teams calls. Coach O went for another 4th-down miracle at the end of the 2nd quarter despite owning a nice lead and a solid new kicker in PK Luke Wacker, who didn’t miss an extra-point attempt. Fans are asking the obvious question of why Ofodile had “long pass” on his clipboard when Festus, once yet again, and again in futility – got that fresh set of downs on the opposing 25 with 2:00 left and a big, bad RB pounding. But truthfully, the most important thing that happened in Friday’s postgame was that Coach O accidentally, and in a presumably 100% honest and offhand way, said he would be back for the 2024 campaign. Ofodile has an even bigger, better roster coming along for next season, and there’s time to fix the mistakes and create the sharper version of his FHS Tigers that it will take to surpass Hillsboro, and other ranked teams that the Tigers just Crimvinently cannot seem to lick no matter what they do. Once accused of coming back to the Varsity ranks for a cup of coffee before going to another SEC program, Coach O and his exciting brand of ‘ball could become an institution, not an experiment at R-6. As the coach says in his Sleepy Jim Crowley voice, “that’s exciting.”

There’s more than one bright side to the boys’ tears from Friday, but finding that positive tone involves facing a lot of pain and anguish head-on…more head-on than Ofodile is at least willing to do in a public forum. Healing this weekend’s wound makes it necessary to rip that Band-Aid off even faster, and consider some hard truth.

The Festus Varsity Football Tigers did not blow a chance to go to the Show-Me Bowl on Friday. It doesn’t matter that Pacific looks like a soft “Cinderella”-style opponent from District 2 in the State Q-Finals. Lutheran North is on Hillsboro and Festus’ side of the Class 4 bracket, and if the Crusaders happen to lose to Hannibal in Week 13, that would simply cast the Show-Me Bowl veteran Hannibal side as the “Blair Oaks” public-school division killer this season. Festus might have more weapons to compare to Lutheran North than Hillsboro’s team-team-team campaign of ’23, but it’s going to take a PERFECT GAME to beat this year’s semifinal opponent. No fumbles, no penalties, no picks, no runs, no drips, no errors. This year’s Festus Tigers, regretfully, but also as plain as the Fridays are long, were never (and would not have been) capable of that. Hillsboro might be, making the less superstar-studded Varsity Hawks into the best Mississippi Conference bid that could advance to Week 13.

This fall’s FHS lineup had EVERY chance to cover its mental blind-spots. But they were always destined to come back against the best teams in the closest games, even after several weeks in a row where it appeared that the team’s pre-snap effort was sharper, and that players now knew not to grab face-masks or to block from behind. Hillsboro’s schooling of the Festus Tigers in yet another 4th quarter may have involved some dramatic HHS penalties right at the end, but it also showed how the boys could have been embarrassed by a Hannibal, or Grandview of Kansas City type Show-Me Bowl team had they made it that far in ’23. If a coach cannot cure the organization’s biggest flaw from summer’s weeks by November, it’s probably just the nature of the beast. Midmeadow Lane is thrilled Coach O is staying, but he’s gotta sprinkle that one on his Frosted Flakes.

Then there’s the tragedy of Festus QB Jeremiah Cunningham, who threw an INT on the goal-line to lose Friday’s championship game by a single point. You probably won’t read exactly those words in a lot of places because nobody wants to spell it out like that. Neither does The Geek. It’s too damned sad. We haven’t really had any quarterback from the county have to go through exactly this kind of shell-shock episode, though we probably observed it in North County’s backfield when things went south against the Tigers in last year’s postseason. Is it impossible to paint a silver lining for Mr. Cunningham, who’s taken alternating snaps on Friday nights ever since becoming FHS’s new QB, and blossomed into a Division 1 player right before our eyes, has finished his prep football career by pitching away a free gift to a desperate blood rival. This blogger’s heart goes out to him.

So what’s the – gulp – bright side of THAT story? It’s that Jeremiah Cunningham has earned many NCAA teams’ attention as a prospect in more than one sport and position. He’s got a fantastic arm, too, and it’ll pitch pelotas with more success than Friday’s crummy climax, no matter if “Miah” becomes a college quarterback or another kind of standout at the next level. The youngster will be told the usual “It wouldn’t even have been close without you,” about 70,000 times over the next 7 days, but he should also thinking about what happens to the High School players who aren’t NCAA studs who make a bad mistake on their final turn in Varsity. It happens so much that we don’t think about it! Countless 18-year-olds are tackled, mauled, mugged, forced to fumble, or otherwise fail on their final attempt at a Friday Night Lights touchdown, and we say, “Oh, it’s too bad for Coach XYZ” and move on. But if Cunningham earns so much as a backup’s role as a college player, he will have a precious, rare chance at redemption that comes to less than 2% of the Varsity kids who ended their prep careers on a down note.

There’s more where Cunningham came from, and no, we don’t mean Farmington! The Festus roster of 2023 was like a Real Estate showing of a house with all kinds of perks, poinsettias, and pretty things sat around it. Midmeadow Lane’s roster of ’24 will be a monster truck, with a few special kids in the driver’s seat. But if you think Hillsboro won’t be a high hurdle for whatever Festus has to offer next autumn, just go look up the MSHSAA TV stream of the Hawks’ crazy last-ditch triumph from Week 12.

Wait – no, actually don’t do that, because it costs $10 and stops working for 6:00 of the stupid game at a time. Wouldn’t ya know! But no MSHSAA autumn can be perfect…a good slogan for today’s Recaps #3 and #4.

Crystal City 8, Tipton 6

Crystal City Football booster Wendy Lnoneya complained to The Geek this week that his constant pop-culture references (and nerdy strategy talk) are too much for readers to follow, and still grasp at all the meat-and-potatoes football stuff. That’s fair, especially as Week 12’s schedule was so thrilling that Mississippi Magazine went overboard with a huge preview. Not everyone can recall The Three Stooges after scores of decades since Moe slapped Larry, and not everyone is a fanboy of Matt Damon. We even invoked the Holy Roman Bible on Page 4.

How about comparing Crystal City’s one-of-a-kind Week 12 upset win to a sports legend that EVERYBODY knows? The memory of a game that’s so woven into American culture, Sports Illustrated didn’t even need any words to describe what was shown on the cover of its magazine:

Most folks know the final score of the Miracle on Ice from 1980: “USA 4, Soviet Union 3.” Crystal City’s 8-6 win over Tipton? It’s an earthquake, a “Tremor on Turf.” USA 4, USSR 3? Heck, as of today, “8 to 6” feels twice as nice.

Kanden Bolton has rushed for many, many long TDs for the Crystal City Hornets. Friday’s fight showed Bolton beginning to flourish next to a developing sophomore QB, in spite of CCHS shifting out of its 2-running-back setup that already proved deadly versus Harrisburg in Week 11, and going back to the “Navy” wheel-motion attack without its junior Triple Option specialist playing QB. Friday night’s plan for success didn’t involve fancy laterals, though, let alone call for another 400 total-yards outing from #2…not with his partner-in-crime finally back at cornerback.

Everything worked out great. Because those tiny 2 and 1/2 yards Kanden Bolton gained to score Friday’s winning touchdown, on a lovely Rocket Toss and sprint to the corner, turned out to make more history than 400 yards ever could. We noticed that while Bolton usually slows down as he crosses the pylons away from pursuit, THIS time #2 burst over with enough of a rush to go rogue, and to tip-toe the track like Mizzou’s Luther Burden vs Tennessee. Crystal’s crowd could begin to feel a victory, and a shot at the Final Four in this week’s championship round.

Then came the bold call to set aside Crystal City’s “experimental” kicking game, and let the offense stay out to try to mint the winning 2 points. One fake, one rejected tackle, and a ROAR that was heard all the way over in Herky:

So much history was made on Friday night that Hornet Football is shy about it. Coach Dan Fox begged off looking up the brackets of Crystal City’s old playoff runs in a Saturday email to Mississippi Magazine, and told Regional Radio in postgame that CCHS “hadn’t won any District playoff games since 2012,” which was disingenuous. Fox certainly knows that there WERE no District football tournaments as of 11 seasons ago, at least not like we know MSHSAA postseason play today. Back in 2012, “Districts” were just mandatory games you played against local opponents on weekends that would typically have been regular-season games. (Everybody hated that, and so Missouri football changed again to the system we have now.) One’s alma mater could win an academic “District postseason” contest (in Week 8 – blech!) and finish “1-2” in the “playoffs,” but it didn’t place ’em in the top half. Moreover, even winning the local District with a perfect 3-0 record didn’t put you 2 or 3 games from the grail. Crystal’s spectacular 2-0 record in 2023’s actual District tournament might just be the best CCHS pigskin performance EVER, no disrespect to 20th century teams who were often snubbed out of the playoffs.

MSHSAA’s Playoff History portal is just a soccer-style ledger that puts Crystal City (and 200 other schools) in 9 or so “District Playoffs” in a row from 2005 onward, and it gives Crystal credit for 4 wins and 10 losses in all of its “postseason” appearances since 1970. That doesn’t help us much. The association’s site shows Missouri’s championship brackets back to 2005, and CCHS is on the record as winning an official State (not District) postseason game in ’09 over East Prairie. But that was a Class 2 Round-of-16 in which CCHS went 1-1.

(Crystal City is also given credit for one “3rd Place” historical playoff finish. IN FOOTBALL. How does that happen? Did they hold a dumb Round-Robin for the State Championship in 1970? Did they put on an annual Show-Me Consoled Consolation Game series for the state playoff field’s bridesmaids? Hope not. It sounds dreadful.)

In other words, the ’23 Crystal City Hornets have won more playoff games against cross-state opponents than any Bradley’s Farm team in history, at least outside the Field House and the baseball diamond. Somewhere, Senator Bill Bradley is smiling, and threatening the St. Vincent Indians with a hearing in Congress if they get too ornery.

Coach Dan Fox’s game plan on offense fooled Mississippi Magazine again on Friday. Crystal City did not let its hair hang down. In fact, the Varsity High School Hornets took the field at Sunken Place in a buzzin’ crew-cut of military precision, plowing forward for short gains and chewing up the clock. But the new QB Cale Schaumburg led an offense which – in our opinion – did as much to win Week 12’s bout as ANY club that ever scored just one TD.

Meanwhile, though, the blog was proven 200% right about Crystal City’s defense, which now appears to have underachieved all year until finally finding its form against Herculaneum in Week 9. We thought at the time that CCHS had blown a perfect chance for victory #7 on the season, since Herky’s attack was so impotent versus all opponents in October. When the HHS Blackcats went on to score 4 times in 3 quarters in a 32-26 win over the Kennett Indians, this reporter’s first reaction was “Hey, maybe the Crystal City defense IS getting really good!” Ricardo Pastrana and Riley Hendrickson led a Class of ’26 effort of nearly 30 combined tackles in Week 12. Crystal’s got big-time tacklers coming out of the woodwork, as the upperclass kids peak at a perfect time.

“Really good” is not the phrase for Crystal’s awesome defense in the semifinal. There are no official statistics as of Mississippi Magazine’s press time, but the Tipton Cardinals’ powerful offense mounted at least 4 or 5 drives into plus-territory, only to be dismissed by the Hornet defense on all but one of its chances to score. Without Seth Senter’s presence, and with Camden Mayes still hobbled, we thought Tipton’s burly lineup of 40+ athletes might nevertheless cause the dam to break, and the visiting #4 ranked team in MSHSAA Class 1 would score at least 4 touchdowns. Friday became the night on which CCHS proved its defense is DEEP along with all of the other wonderful things you can say about it. The best bit about Crystal City’s cast-iron playoff ‘D is not that most of Friday’s top tacklers were freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, starring for a team that was supposed to be attempting a “one-shot” Show-Me Bowl tournament bid in ’23. (<—-That runs a close second.) The best development out of CCHS’s defense is that it has NO weak links, only standout kids in the starting-11.

It might be a trendy pick to call for “St. Vincent 42, Crystal City 14” in the District Championship Game for a Final Four berth on Friday night. I-55 champion St. Vinny’s has beaten Perryville and St. Pius X by scores like that in ’23. But don’t worry, The Geek won’t follow along. How would you like to be a high-tempo team’s coach like St. Vincent’s, and have to prepare for a Sunken Place defense that’s beginning to look all-grown-up from the senior class to the freshmen? Hefty rookie Gage McPherson started in place of the ineligible senior Seth Senter vs Tipton, but one wouldn’t have known that by how the rugged Hornets held a #4 state-ranked team’s backs to minimal yardage, and its WRs to almost nothing, making the Cardinals one-dimensional with QB rushes.

Defensive line? Senter, Luke Holdinghausen, and Caden Raftery. Let McPherson have his turns up front and that lets Raftery or Holdinghausen take a familiar stand-up role, next to linebackers like Nolan Eisenbeis. Behind that, oh, no big deal, there’s just 2 of the finest track stars in the county playing cornerback out there. P’FOOOooo! Mississippi Magazine hopes someone is foolish enough to favor St. Vinny’s in a snoozer, because we won’t. Harrisburg and Tipton scored an awful lot of TDs vs tough Central MO rivals in 2023, but not versus CCHS. Jefferson, St. Pius X, and St. Vincent of the I-55 league might go anywhere from 2-1 to 0-3 vs Tipton ’23. “Fohgetaboutit,” this team’s defense is for REAL and poses a stiff challenge to the #1 Indians on Friday.

As for Crystal City’s scrappy offense against Tipton, all we can say is that Cale Schaumburg is a special young player, and that Coach Fox has been 2 steps ahead of his District rivals (and TGG) since the playoffs began. Fox crafted a game plan for the #2 vs #3 showdown that was simple, obvious, and devilish all at once. We wanted Crystal to let its hair down and score enough trick-play TDs to stay ahead. But the head coach took a look at Tipton’s surreal roster size – that came close to Pacific’s and Perryville’s program numbers from Class 4! – and diabolically decided to slow his team’s lively offense down ON PURPOSE, and to try to defeat the favored Tipton Cardinals by the nose of the football. QB Cale Schaumburg is still not Crystal City’s most devastating weapon running the Triple-Option play. Nolan Eisenbeis is. But the new fellow behind center can run the heck out of Mississippi Avenue’s many QB keepers and Spin-Trap style fakes (sorry, Wendy!), and Schaumburg’s rare leadership has also helped to turn things around for CCHS’s skill players from a discipline point-of-view. Unbelievably, the Hornets did not lose a fumble, or throw a single interception versus the Cardinals.

What helped Fox’s “Hair Up” game plan work to a T? How about a dose of throw-back tactics from The Geek’s childhood? Crystal City made like Herky back in the 1990s by turning the long 48:00 into a slow burn, with Tipton’s long drives mostly serving to run the clock out on its own talented attack. Herculaneum’s old “Wishbone” style teams (that means they ran up the middle a lot, Wendy!) used to cause football games to move along so fast, the opposing team – often bigger and more numerous – barely got 4 shots at a TD even if they moved the ball well. Cardinals’ fans in attendance on Friday night went into a hush even as Tipton drove slowly down the gridiron, carrying a 6-point lead early in the 3rd quarter. They knew the danger of watching the sticks move slowly in opposing directions for full quarters of play without any points added on the scoreboard. Sure enough, the monumental, grinding, winning TD drive from CCHS came soon after Tipton’s failed turn out of the break. Without a doubt, Fox’s canny plan also kept the short-handed Hornets from tiring against a 40-man team.

2023’s Crystal City Hornets have blown their skeptics away with a 12-gun shooter, and smoke from the ambush is still wafting over the river next to Bradley’s Farm. The Gridiron Geek can spill the beans about something important now that our Class 1 school has turned into an honest-to-goodness Show-Me Bowl contender – there has been whispering going on for YEARS about how CCHS football is a fraud, a “paper lion,” due to competing as an independent instead of in the I-55 Conference. “Crystal has a cupcake schedule!” a hater from outside the Mississippi Magazine landscape snarled at The Geek at a Friday game we won’t name from this season.

It’s impossible to play a “cupcake” schedule when you’ve got the smallest program in the state. We’ve been all over that already. But 2023’s playoff run changes the CCHS conversation again, and will probably cause that hater to hide if ever coming across The Geek again. Crystal City was coming off a miserable, maddening rivalry-game defeat to Herculaneum as of the Q-Finals, and found a way to outdo a wild Arkansas-style team 40-30 to advance, an opponent that rang-up 40+ points against the 10-1 Milan Wildcats this season. Then the Hornets conquered Tipton, a troop which had looked like CCHS’s semifinal knock-out nemesis ever since Week 2’s upset loss to Louisiana. Now it looks like they’re really up against big, fat odds on a different surface versus St. Vincent.

But be careful, St. Vincent Indians. You’re not just up against any old #2 seed in the championship clash. You’re up against a Tri-Cities sensation at this point…and up against one sensational defense.

Jackson 55, Seckman 21

The Geek is actually fond of the “Home Pools and Spas!” radio jingle, and enjoys listening to Regional Radio’s postgame shows now that Griffin Weinberg has sharpened up the coach’s interviews, and now that the Funeral Home’s not sponsoring every other ad break with theme music right out of the final scenes of “Soylent Green”:

(“Hood’s Home Center (For a New Generation),” meanwhile, could be used to torture bank robbers into confessing their crimes and walking into prison on their own. Seriously, if an ET visitor to Earth asks for a definition of what “bad” music on our planet sounds like, just play them a clip of the 2 least-happy Adult Contemporary singers of all time, performing “Hood’s Home Center (For a New Generation).” It’s the ultimate way to define what sucks.)

But the Coach Nick Baer interview following Seckman’s Week 12 loss was not one that TGG wanted to listen to, and indeed, wound up not listening to. Baer, unknown to the mailbox-lazy Gridiron Geek at press time of last Thursday’s predictions, made a mistake and handed Jackson High some bulletin board material right from the Jefferson County Leader’s pregame interview, by implying that Seckman had more capable “athletes” than powerhouse Jackson did. “We shouldn’t expect them to out-athlete us,” Baer said. “They’re just very well-coached and know how to go fast.”

Was that the HC’s biggest misfire in years of lifting the Jags to prominence? It feels like it right now. The surly Jackson Indians showed up to Imperial with some pretty good “athletes” (YA THINK?), and laid on such an awful licking on formerly 10-0 Seckman in the opening frame that we won’t upset the SHS boys by going over it all again here. Jackson’s visit to Seckman was covered by everyone-and-a-dog from the media, so the Varsity Jaguars very probably got sick of hearing about the scrum’s highlights about 15 minutes after they walked off the gridiron.

In fact, keeping 2 of this week’s 4 recaps short will prevent SPX coach Frank Ray from making fun of TGG all winter, which is important because we’ve got some questions for CFR about that next St. Pius X senior class to prioritize. But speaking of St. Pius, Week 12’s Seckman-Jackson prediction was officially The Geek’s WORST since calling Perryville the “favorite” over Hill Valley this regular season, only for the poor Pirates to lose by a Turbo Clock. It wouldn’t look kosher to duck that end of it by getting-out-of-dodge with a Seckman shortie, so there’s that.

We’ll cover the SHS Jaguars’ picking-up-the-pieces angle in the year’s last Jefferson County Power Poll. Don’t y’all worry, Rock Creek dwellers. Coach Baer and the Jags made brilliant work of just that task in spring of ’23.

Lift For Life 22, Jefferson 14

As it happens sometimes, The Gridiron Geek has become too wrung-out by so many local teams’ banner years to do Jefferson’s close call justice in a recap today. From the wide-angle view, it can’t feel good at Blue Jay Way to have played in Jefferson High’s FIRST truly heart-stopping District Championship Game and to not come away victorious. For fans of all Festus teams, it’s even worse! The town’s 2 top contenders held 28 points’ worth of combined leads at halftime and couldn’t hang on, each against an opponent that could not dominate them.

But we know that Lift For Life is to Class 2 with Lutheran North is to Class 4, and what Cardinal Ritter is to Class 5, an occasionally rag-tag but clearly MEGA-talented lineup that will turn into a division killer quickly if state playoff opponents aren’t well-enough prepared. When you compare Jefferson’s awesome opening half against what Jefferson County’s other neighborhood hopefuls have done against the assembled teams of Missouri, the “diminutive” Class 2 Blue Jays’ program actually fared better than anyone in trying to tame that beast.

Hillsboro scored first on Cardinal Ritter…then fell behind by 27 points. Festus lost to Valle University in an ugly game back in Week 2. Fox fell handily to St. Mary’s in the playoffs. But the Varsity Blue Jays, for one sweet hour-or-so of real time, came closer than any of those teams to finally conquering a manufactured team’s hungry lineup under bright circumstances. It does deserve a recap – Jefferson’s whole 2023 does! – and we’ll give it one very soon.