The Geek had planned waiting a while to pen the year’s final Jefferson County Power Poll, to gain some perspective on 2023’s action before ranking Mississippi Magazine’s dozen teams one final time until September. Something about how that climactic Class 6 Show-Me Bowl scrum ended last weekend makes us rethink that strategy, in favor of shouting at MSHSAA readers while the Gateway Arch is hot. The controversy of Week 15, for all its fright, has everyone talking about Missouri football for once.
The blog’s last blush with a national story wasn’t any more pleasant than CBC vs Liberty North. Austin Anderson and a host of Midmeadow Lane standouts – coaches and players – were accused of all kinds of wrongdoing in 2020, with even The Geek’s webpages not immune to a championship season’s ugly Law-Fare. Haters fought City Hall and several communities at once trying to dismantle the whole campaign, and then the New York Post chimed in. Highway A football kept rolling despite COVID-19 and everything else hurled at it. Maybe it’s that kind of resiliency that helped Missouri public-school bids overcome the odds (or at least the stats) and declare a coup in the 2023 Show-Me Bowl.
We encourage our under-18 readers to grow up watching, playing, and cheering for various sports, not just football or another lonely sport that they might like. That goes against Whitney Houston’s “let them lead the way” parental advice, but any sport’s “fan” who only ever follows that sport is a dull fan. For example, the St. Louis bloggers who’re busy trashing Liberty North’s epic win over CBC, due to the tomfoolery with 3:12 to go, must not be St. Louis Blues hockey fans, or they would remember what the National Hockey League media (read: Boston, Toronto, and a coffee shop in Seattle) tried to yelp about the Blue Note after 2019’s Stanley Cup victory over the Boston Bruins. They said that the Stanley Cup Finals should have been suspended, and the Blues disqualified for dirty play. After the Gateway’s so-called “steep underdogs” won, NHL podcasts said that the St. Louis Blues were not legitimately a champion and that only cheating (read: rough body-checks) caused the outcome.
Just 4 and 1/2 years later, we all wake up to a Show-Me Bowl story in Spokes Daily Prep Sports STL called, “Liberty North’s desire for pound of flesh taints title.”
Opinion: Liberty North's desire for pound of flesh taints title https://t.co/xwzneeZKJh
— PrepSportsSTL (@PrepSportsSTL) December 3, 2023
The most wrong-headed line of that article is its last, about Liberty North having a worse “loss” than any of its previous defeats to CBC. Gosh, did anyone from the St. Louis media try to climb into the scoreboard control-box at Faurot Field and reverse the numbers to “CBC 38, Liberty North 7?” The wonder and the grace of sports is that you can’t do it. Liberty North will always have clocked CBC, several touchdowns to one, in the 2023 Class 6 championship game. The attempt to reverse that outcome somehow and hand CBC a “Lady Byng Trophy” instead paints our city in a poor light. If spectators can read a Box Score, they know that CBC took 6x as many personal-foul flags as the Varsity Eagles did, and if they’ve got Twitter, they know that CBC’s bench players rushed LNHS, a confrontation clearly on their minds, before heroes from both lineups saved the day at midfield.
If any Liberty North kids read this, please know not everyone from the St. Louis area is disregarding your outstanding win over a recruited team, and that we absolutely don’t agree that the Eagles lost Saturday’s contest in any sense. You made a souped-up lineup of athletes quit, just like Sugar Ray Leonard. What’s more, LNHS and Lamar have helped to GIVE US OUR SPORT BACK this year.
It’s tempting to say more about MSHSAA’s fresh “Water-Cooler” story, especially when said Water Cooler chatter is spreading into Topeka. But we can’t make the Jefferson County Power Poll about anything but (wait for it) Jefferson County’s 12 teams. Thankfully, the best thing about 2023’s epic Show-Me Bowl was how just about every title match impacted our Dirty Dozen in some way. In the Hillsboro Hawks’ case, the “impact” was obvious. But as a whole, our region’s Varsity football has accomplished so much and come so far in a short time that the Show-Me Bowl is no longer some “exotic” event played by teams we don’t dream of competing with. Even the KC area got into ’23’s glorious takeover by so-called underdog public-school programs at the Show-Me Bowl. It was a weekend of promise, inspiration, and spectacular highlights, and it never felt so close to home.
#1 – Hillsboro Hawks
Was there any suspense about who would wind up #1 this year? Hopefully, our readers have some other reason to click besides checking to see who ranks #1. Hillsboro passed up Seckman like Woody Wabbit in 2023’s postseason, defeating the rival Festus Tigers with a clutch comeback while SHS fell way behind the curve against Jackson all over again, then advancing to pound Pacific and favored Lutheran North to arrive in last weekend’s Class 4 championship.
It’s a less controversial opinion to think Hillsboro’s defeat wasn’t really the most lopsided of Friday and Saturday’s kickoffs, even though Kearney’s 40-point margin-of-W technically stands as the biggest of a Show-Me Bowl filled with nail-biting bouts. HHS was a few fumbles and special-teams mishaps away from getting into a close 4th quarter to determine a #1 trophy of far, FAR more prestige than Mississippi Magazine could ever award, and the negatives aren’t important enough to lead with.
We learned Saturday that Hillsboro’s offense is championship worthy. State championship worthy. Preston Brown’s offense began the Class 4 Show-Me Bowl with a brother-to-brother catch and run that made 50,000 viewers in St. Louis and Kansas City hold their breath at the same time. Payton Brown (how have we gone this long without nicknaming him “Walter”) zeroed-in on a deflected pass, thrown perfectly over a Trident-sticky defender down the middle, and caught the pigskin in stride, running all the way to the 1-yard line before getting tackled-up on a play that scarcely seemed as significant at-first as Hillsboro’s explosion of offense right out of the gate. But a 5-yard flag gave Kearney its chance to make a goal-line stand, drive 98 yards for a score, and set the tone for Hillsboro’s frustrating day on defense.
Do we criticize Hillsboro’s players for fumbling, bumbling, and blowing coverages at the worst times? Nope. They weren’t expected to go half as far as 2022’s Varsity Hawks, and here we are talking about Leon Hall’s offense and defense in “Week 16” after the postseason. Should we make it a major story that Preston Brown fumbled on the goal-line of what could have been a pivotal TD drive at the first half’s end? Nah, we shouldn’t do that, either, because Brown was one of the few juniors (or seniors) handling the ball for Blue & White who wasn’t expected to make a big impact on defense against Kearney. In other words, the QB couldn’t do much about Kearney’s 10 touchdowns-scored, and that Hillsboro-to-KHS touchback to end the 1st half was a crap-shoot outcome from beginning to end of HHS’s attempted scoring drive anyway. Class 4’s referees – while 200x better than the crew that hosed out Hillsboro’s bid at St. Mary’s last season – were clumsy enough to march the football forward and backwards on the same penalty calls, and later gave HHS a “4th and 3” after a defensive pass interference (!?) in the end zone, a blunder that would have fit right in at St. Mary’s last year.
There’s one way The Gridiron Geek does think Hillsboro blew the shot, though, and it’s a funny thing. The Geek considers Hillsboro’s skipper Bill Sucharski to be an elite Varsity football coach, almost as innovative and successful (he’s getting there) as Pulaski Academy’s iconic head man Kevin Kelley. Mississippi Magazine hasn’t knocked Sucharski for anything since the time he called for 2 Midline rushes in a row against North County in the 2020 playoffs, but he unfortunately helped the KHS Bulldogs turn a sold advantage on offense into a 10-gun salute and an easy romp to the grail.
Was Hillsboro PK Nick Marchetti’s foot or leg injured on Show-Me Bowl week? HHS handicapped its ailing defense in the championship game by calling for a bunch of “Class 1” style kickoffs, half-hearted “on-side” attempts that don’t produce that 1-in-4 chance of recovering a bobbled pigskin, each time it was the Hawks’ turn to tee it up. Kearney’s special teams responded like a bad Bulldog, not content to simply fall onto Marchetti’s squib kicks, but taking the easy recovery and scampering up the Faurot Field sidelines to get into plus-territory immediately. 40+ out of Kearney’s 68 points came on short-gridiron drives, while Hillsboro’s starting field position made slow-burn drives a fact of life even as Preston Brown burned Kearney’s defensive backs with a long bomb every so often. Hillsboro High outgained Kearney for much of the game but was far more prone to turnovers, and couldn’t well intercept many passes or knock-out many opposing fumbles while giving up a 30-yard drive for a touchdown, then waiting for the defense’s next blink-and-you’ll-miss-it chance to make noise.
We’ve watched Nick Marchetti kick touchback after touchback for 2 seasons now. Kearney’s kicker wasn’t as strong as Hillsboro’s, but he got the green-light to pin Leon Hall inside its own 30 and even its own 15-yard line without HHS taking a penalty on the kick return. KHS feasted on field position as a result. If the Varsity Hawks could have utilized their great kicking game to turn the field against Kearney, the way that the Bulldogs special teams tilted the pitch against Marchetti and the Hawks instead, then it wouldn’t have turned into a 40-point bout. Saturday would’ve been close under that circumstance no matter HOW great KHS’s offense was.
Did Sucharski lose his nerve, and decide KHS’s rocket-armed QB was bound to hurt the Hawks’ defense just as badly from his own 25-yard line as anywhere else, so that it wasn’t worth it to give Marchetti a coach’s go-ahead to boom his bombs? More likely the HHS head coach was caught between 2 contradictory calls, and went down the dangerous middle road, squibbing Hillsboro’s kickoffs instead of playing to his team’s strength with touchbacks, or (the other extreme) trying for a make-it-take-it. Pulaski Academy’s style of kicking aggressively on-side at every chance wouldn’t have cost the Hillsboro Hawks any field position given the poor outcomes of the squib kicks, and might’ve given Hillsboro a better chance against an offense that couldn’t be stopped without a flag or a turnover. Marchetti’s trademark TBs would have created another interesting type of scrum in which KHS dominated with grinding drives, but got into jeopardy of fumbling on that 12th play themselves. Squibbing 7-irons off the PK accomplished neither aim, wasting #19’s remarkable boot after 2 kick-arse* years of it.
*One of Hillsboro High’s coolest traits is that nobody’s so stuck up that you can’t say “ass” or “dammit” in a sports setting without somebody getting upset, and mouthing-off at you in a ruder way than if they had said “ass” or “dammit” in a friendly way. (That sentence had more double-negatives than the Notre Dame groundskeeper from “Rudy”: “Son, if you haven’t proved nothin’ to nobody by none o’ this time, IT AIN’T GONNA NEVER HAPPEN!”) But “arse” is how they say “ass” in the Premier League, and Marchetti’s skills have “United Kingdom” written all over them, even if he winds up in the good old NCAA.
It’s the same type of syndrome we observe when teams drive into plus-territory, only to find themselves in 4th-and-15 at the 49-yard line. The head coach doesn’t want to punt. He pretends to consider not punting. He leaves the offense out on the field to see what the defense would be, simply to fantasize about what it would be like if he didn’t punt. But his team, as sure as driftwood is dry, is going to punt. ‘Cept by now it’s too late to punt the football without a time-out, so then the head coach has to waste a time-out. Then he punts. Why not go on ahead and punt if you’re going to punt anyway? Or, should you prefer to gamble and go for it, then go for it. You burn a time-out just to do what you’re already bound to do? Either hash mark is open for business, but they choose the mud in the middle.
Sucharski can’t fret about what went wrong at the Show-Me Bowl. HHS making it to the gala event in Columbia still makes a ripple effect on the program prior to Preston Brown’s senior year. The skipper, and his 2024 lineup – whatever it may be – are about to go on an equally critical journey as the 2021-23 Hawks have taken, even if Leon Hall isn’t destined to go back to the Final Four right away. With 4 out of 5 senior linemen graduating, and Payton Brown and Chase Sucharski donning their gowns soon, the Blue & White is going to have to make like Seckman and Herky ’23 and pick up the pieces with a largely-rookie roster of starters.
Brown, the Hawks’ resident QB-linchpin, will remain at the helm of a more dynamic playbook than HHS has ever utilized, a leg up on the teams mentioned above who had retired their QBs. It scarcely needs recollection that Seckman and Hillsboro have fared about 20x better than folks might’ve expected after waving bye to NCAA talents back in May, all predictions (except The Geek’s) to the contrary. Like an area coach told TGG on the phone Sunday, “Don’t get nervous about Hillsboro’s graduations, that’s one of those schools that’s always gonna find some kids.” Congrats also to Preston Brown for winning first-choice All State honors in C4, which came across the wires too late to write about, but not to celebrate.
Finally, would it be awkward to address the allegations leveled at Mississippi Magazine from HHS’s sideline photo department? We’re closing out Hillsboro’s coverage for the year, and like it or not, a comment thread telling The Geek to “Get a Lawyer!” and show up in court did make (ahem) a small splash across a screen filled with $10 MSHSAA Pay-Per-Views. Maybe under the circumstances it would be weirder not to bring it up, since Blue & White players, alums, and parents have shared and taken part appreciatively with Magazine fare since the incident. That’s not to outcast the talented Hillsboro photo guys – it’s often TGG who feels outcast.
The Geek was accused of attacking people (besides Head Coaches and School Boards, who are politicians and thus expect to get raved-or-ripped) personally, so we’ll not only state that ZERO individual boosters will be brought up here, but that any such department of any local program has a right to come after Mississippi Magazine if they think we’ve done something wrong. We’re here to try to help 12 programs make noise that spreads farther and wider. Belches and raspberries going across the wires would only hurt HHS or another friend.
We’ll respond to the allegations though, as politely as possible. TGG is alleged to have selfishly turned a profit off the backs of local High School players and their sideline media volunteers. Would anyone like to look at Mississippi Magazine and explain just how they think we’re making money? There are no banner ads here. We have never sold any merchandise, and TGG is never paid for going on YouTube either. It costs about $700 a season to maintain Mississippi Magazine, plus about 10-15 volunteer writing hours per busy week that would otherwise be paid for by The Gridiron Geek’s curator. It’s a labor of love, not a business.
If someone wants to say The Geek is “selfish” for bringing attention onto these articles, they can’t also accuse the blogger of hiding behind a nickname. TGG goes to Friday Night Lights games and very few people even recognize him there, speaking generally. We don’t HIDE your author’s real name – it went out on thousands of Facebook posts before a complaint by another photo club (known only as “Limited View” on these pages) that got the old Mississippi Magazine and The Geek’s personal account censored off Facebook forever, which is why there’s no way the site’s main volunteer can go asking personally for pics on Facebook.
The photos have never been critical to our site. No offense, they’re nice and all, but we’re pretty sure it’s the articles that The Geek’s haters would like to erase, and we’ve had 7000+ readers this season so we’re not going to let that happen, even if Austin “Fresh” Romaine’s old photos have to be replaced with Romaine lettuce leaves. We’ve always avoided any team’s official media sources unless we buy it or get an AD’s permission (thanks Jefferson R-7!), otherwise it’s only a simple search of Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and a selection of the best non-watermarked images that come up. The Magazine can go without for any program that doesn’t appreciate it, in fact Hillsboro’s players are known for just ignoring the CAPS and photos within a Mississippi Magazine post, and hyping it to the Moon if they like it.
Hillsboro’s top click rate of 2022 came on a headline-photo post of a bunch of Seckman’s footballers lounging around, ready to go to sleep on the field. (No, Jackson High wasn’t arriving.) So it was just a Kurt-esy with the photos and not something we have to do.
The Geek won’t dodge having blocked 2 Facebook Group members from Hillsboro who were barking the loudest. It feels lousy and it may not have been the right thing to do. But one of them had nothing to do with any sideline photos, and Week 14 of a championship season that 7000 readers have been waiting on forever seemed like the wrong time to be hashing-out law suits in public view. We’ll take some steps this offseason to make sure that a program CAN complain to Mississippi Magazine, and even take whatever legal actions they feel are necessary, but only through proper channels, and only if they’re serious about it.
As for the charge of blocking someone “for a simple question,” yes, we did block a Facebook Group user for asking a simple little question, of the “How’s your milkshake/fries/cookie gonna taste tonight, PAL?” variety in comments on a Hawks victory week (weren’t they all), aimed not at The Gridiron Geek but at another Hillsboro fan who had been touting the Blue & White religiously. Breaking the Group Rules to taunt the blogger for God-knows-what reason is something of a headache for everybody, but trolling another of your own brand’s fans? There’s people out there who want to fight somebody, anybody, after a football victory, otherwise known as unfortunate victims of a Varsity sport that turns marks into madmen.
It mistakes were made and Hawk feathers ruffled, consider that it was a shock for TGG to face such a hail-storm in Weeks 9-14 given our blog’s history with Hillsboro pigskin. The Geek used photos from Hillsboro Hawks Football social media (and only those) from 2014-2022, to post on everything from 2015’s “Pulaski Academy” offense to 2017’s icy struggle against Ladue, to eulogizing a tragically young suicide-victim, to covering Jaxin Patterson as a freshman prodigy all the way through his senior year, to calling-out MSHSAA’s referees for a circus of a scrum at St. Mary’s that might have prevented 2 title chases in a row. All that time, Hillsboro’s social media encouraged Mississippi Magazine to utilize their Facebook images, from all corners of the program. HHS boosters sent PMs on Facebook to thank TGG. The Hillsboro Touchdown Club, the HHS Cheerleaders, and Hillsboro Hawks Football pages all shared Mississippi Magazine’s posts back to us, with their social-media pics all over them.
So the episode was a blind-side tackle, so to speak. But once again, we’re not in the business (any business) of distracting teams by making their sideline volunteers upset, and you can still find Mississippi Magazine’s apology from Week 9 to one of HHS’s workers whom TGG thought must have been from Cardinal Ritter. (If they sue, then opposing teams cannot sue them quite as quickly.) We’ll do whatever is necessary to clean the Magazine on any offending media-use, and anyone who tries to bring up any of this stuff in a confrontational way in the Facebook Group will not be blocked, but their comments will be removed while we have someone politely seek them out, hear out their complaint, delete any media that’s cast into doubt (just to prevent a conflict) and so on. Meanwhile, given just how much credit Hillsboro’s coaches and players have garnered here, and will continue to garner, it seems fair to chalk any of 2023’s bad vibes from end-zone sidelines to a good old-fashioned…
The above image of Phil Collins appears by permission of his wife.
T-2 – Festus Tigers
Now we know there’s readers who think Mississippi Magazine is weighing Imperial too lightly, in favor of teams that The Geek cut his teeth reporting on. Why else rank a pair of Mississippi Conference brands above or tied with Seckman, a 10-1 enterprise from Class 6 this season, especially when the T-2 ranked team from Class 4 went just 8-4 overall, and blew a substantial lead right at the end?
It’s not an “Eye Test” so much. Call it a Question Test. If your Large School alma mater had to play a District final tomorrow night, which team would you rather they face – Festus or Seckman? Midmeadow Lane and The Valley had just one opponent in common after the leaves turned in ’23, and it was FHS that trailed Jackson 28-14 at the exact juncture at which Seckman-Jackson’s trailing team began trying on their basketball shoes. It’s true that Jackson was full-bore ahead in a postseason setting in a way the Indians may not have been against Festus R-6. It’s also certain that both Jefferson County schools in question got better as autumn went on, as the Seckman Jaguars destroyed an Oakville playoff team that had presented some problems for SHS in midseason. But the 2023 Festus Tigers played a superior game of pigskin against Class 4’s Show-Me Bowl runners-up in Week 12 than versus Valle University, this season’s Class 2 Show-Me Bowl runners-up, back in Week 2. That’s a rising stock portfolio that even Nick Baer’s amazing program can’t touch.
Rising tides lift all boats. There were calls for HC A.J. Ofodile’s chair from a few seats at Tiger Stadium this season, as alumni pondered the skipper’s 1-5 (now 1-6) record against Hillsboro and a pair of .500 years in a row following 2020’s glory. The loud minority didn’t know whether to yelp louder or feel excited after the Black & Gold did everything but take down the favored Hawks in Week 12’s championship contest. But we have noticed that as Hillsboro advanced further and further in a loaded Show-Me Bowl tournament field, such chatter about Coach O quieted down considerably. Festus, after all, lost by one point to a Show-Me Bowl team in its own division, and that’s technically the best football any R-6 club has played in 15 years.
Other opponents did Festus a favor by playing well, like college rivals that boost your Top 25 resume by winning after you’ve beaten them. Pacific’s championship from this fall is as legit as it was unexpected, as the Varsity Indians knocked off a here-comes-the-train-down-the-tracks style contender in Sullivan to prevail in Week 12. Given the outcomes of other games in Columbia and leading up to Week 15, the FHS Tigers can even boast that Festus played better defense against Pacific than Class 4’s runner-up Hillsboro, AND better defense against those same Hillsboro Hawks than the C4 champion Kearney played in the Show-Me Bowl, especially given that HHS did not blunder right on the goal-line twice in its classic 29-28 comeback win 4 weeks ago. Seckman and Hillsboro’s bugaboo opponents might be alive and well in Jackson and Cardinal Ritter respectively, but as of 2023-24, Festus football has now bitten-off a pair of such snake’s heads in St. Genevieve and Farmington.
Graduations will tear at Midmeadow Lane’s skill positions almost as badly as Hillsboro’s spring. A starting QB-RB duo is moving on in May, along with celebrated playmaker and Lollipop Guild standout Landen Yates, and R-6 defensive ends Austin Gould and Dante Bridgett. But the Tigers retain a fabulous corps of seasoned 2-way linemen for 2024, including Rob Turner, Mason Weinhouse, Connor Rush, Zeke Cristobal, Isaiah Desmarius, Carson Grass (a sophomore-to-be who Ofodile’s been high on all along), a nifty FB-to-center convert in Calvin Ellis, and the youthful edge-rushing prospect Antonio Pinkston.
That’ll make a hefty bundle for Class 4 rivals to block, especially with the Tigers’ 6’3, 230-pound linebacker Mason Schirmer going into his senior year with a vengeance. On offense, everything’s in place for QB Essien Smith to have a “Cole Ruble” type of year, leading the area in rushing yards…except he’ll be chucking a few more passes than Ruble while galloping into the top spot or something close to it. Lastly, if DB Trey Lacey recovers to play football again in 2024, he’ll be a part of an All-Star cast along the boundary.
T-2 – Seckman Jaguars
“Baer” with TGG for a second, but Seckman’s 2023 season was not unlike the Presidential Election campaign of 7 years ago. (We’ll have to soothe a lot of anger and try to keep folks focused on football no matter how November ’24 turns out, so why not get in some practice during the prior offseason.) 2016’s winning “candidate” was accused of going heavily to the Right (aka a W/L record’s loss column to the right) and did everything they could to satisfy that Left-side requirement, like waving LGBTQ flags starting a perfect 10-0, praying at progressive churches whipping every single Suburban League rival, sometimes by worse scores than in Cole Ruble’s senior year, and promising not to conquer any Third World nations for profit promising never to fall behind to Oakville in the opening half again.
But there was no getting around The Wall.
Neither could Seckman football get over The Wall again this year, that force-field that seems to prevent Jefferson County’s best and bravest teams from getting into the state bracket sometimes. Seckman’s crazy romp to 10-0 might have had the “Alabama” effect of causing the Jaguars’ schedule to look weak when it really wasn’t. But the Jackson battle made the Indians look like Georgia and the Jaguars look like Middle Tennessee, an 0-42 whitewash which could make some ’22-23 graduates wonder why they didn’t write “Ritenour” or an alternative school on the walls that could have stood as Seckman’s dream opponent.
We’re excited for the future of MSHSAA football after Week 15’s classic Show-Me Bowl. The biggest negative from Class 6’s title tourney isn’t the uproar over CBC not winning like it was supposed to CBC not finishing the last game, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t indeed a big, fat negative to report. The fact is that Classes 5-6 look as thin as a McDonalds pancake.
The Suburban League is tough, but the Class division’s annual Show-Me Bowl hopefuls are tougher, and there’s another tier of the “Liberty North” variety under that. Seckman only scored 3 victories over winning teams all season, and Pattonville – which appeared to be the most dangerous foe on SHS’s regular season slate, lost to Eureka 34-0 and was eliminated from the playoffs quickly. Seckman can honestly say that the Jaguars have surpassed 90% of Class 6, but there’s still that CBC + Jackson + Liberty North tier that the Imperial kids can’t touch. Either that, or Jackson is Seckman’s genuine “bugaboo” opponent that causes the Jags to slip 40-50 points in form, like Valle U. re: St. Genevieve or Farmington re: Potosi.
What’s worse is that Class 6’s inch-wide, mile-deep field of programs could turn Seckman into its own sort of “Elevator” team, just like Windsor in a weird way, with little to do except blow-out inferior teams and get blown-out by superior ones. Valle makes a well-matched opponent for Seckman High School on the gridiron – and played its role in a seminal SHS win from Week 1 of this year – but that’s a non-conference game that’s likely to go bye-bye in 2024 as Valle U. pleads with MSHSAA to stay down in Class 2.
It would solve the problem if Seckman went into Fox’s conference division and Fox went into Seckman’s. Seckman’s 27-14 win over rival Arnold in midseason may have had a deceptive final score, but it was still a competitive, 27-points-scored outing for QB Tommy Gibbar and the Jaguars, not an inhumane romp like most of Imperial’s bouts against lower-level Suburban League competition. That shows that Fox’s 3-7 overall record isn’t really that far behind Seckman’s 10-1 mark given how much harder Fox’s schedule was in ’23, which is not to say that Seckman’s great teams wouldn’t still streak to excellent W/L records going against Fox’s division. But it would give the Warriors and the Jaguars a boost if we could wave a wand and make it happen. Seckman would square-off against Lindbergh, Lafayette, and Ritenour among other solid Class 5 and Class 6 schools, and Coach Baer’s powerful Varsity Jaguars would probably win most of those games, but they’d lose a handful more, learn to handle adversity vs someone other than “C6 In Name Only” opponents like Northwest, and be better prepared to face a Jackson or a CBC in District action. Meanwhile, the Fox Warriors are in a scenario where they’d love to take on a fairer balance of foes from the Suburban League, for a reason that we’ll get to after a short break Sponsored By Number 4.
#4 – Fox Warriors
So here we are with an 8-4 team ranked ahead of a 10-1 team, and a 3-7 team (Fox Warriors) ranked right below the 10-win school. Oh, and #4 is ranked ahead of a pair of 8-win teams. How does that work?
For some perspective, let’s think about what Fox’s lineup could have done against Seckman’s schedule in ’23. Having the easier Suburban League slate may not have resulted in 10 wins for Arnold, but we think that it would have produced a winning season for the county’s only Class 5 brand. Fox would probably lose to Class 2’s runner-up Valle University in a Week 1 contest, given the health and wealth of small-school rosters when the season begins. But undoubtedly, Fox would have racked-up 4 consecutive wins against the early campaign’s Seckman opponents U-City, Northwest, Mehlville, and Parkway South, and would have produced at least 2 victories against Pattonville, Oakville, and Webster Groves.
Better than imaginary 6-3 records is the news that FHS won’t be losing many key names, by Large School program standards, in the year to come. QB Cameron Underwood is a junior. and he doesn’t seem to be losing any major players from the club’s Flexbone backfield, outside of talented 1000+ yard man Ayden Smith. The Fox High defense is taking a more worrisome hit from graduation, but all told, the Warriors will return a senior class that conceivably be twice as big as the squad’s upperclass corps from 2023.
Now to do something about that schedule. The Suburban League’s evolving color-code is based on some weird formula other than the strength of the teams, otherwise Seckman and Fox would have indeed swapped-out the schools’ conference rivals by now. We don’t want Arnold up against the dregs of the region, but a few more wins would help with recruiting.
#5 – Jefferson Blue Jays
Were the ’23 Jefferson Blue Jays the secret poster-child for how Jeff County pigskin was underrated this year? It’s one thing when media doesn’t think you’ll start 7-0, but The Geek noticed that even JHS’s coaches were a tad anxious about the Blue Jays’ season debut last summer. They shouldn’t have been. Jefferson R-7 ran wild on Friday nights again after a shaky Week 1 debut versus Fredericktown, and defeated the surging St. Pius Lancers, not once, but twice, to reestablish HC Matt Atley’s program as the county’s small-school kings. Crystal City only beat Tipton once. Besides, Jefferson’s slate was full of quality scalps.
It was Jefferson’s Week 4 victory at Hill Valley that impressed TGG the most, and not just because he was there to live-blog the event. St. Pius X came into the contest roaring, without a loss in spite of circumstances making SPX take on a Class 4 team plus another batch of players from rival Brentwood in only Week 1 of Frank Ray’s tenure. Jefferson was late even getting out on the field as the Lancers’ kids practiced, hyped each other up, and listened to last-minute coach’s instructions. But then came Jefferson storming up the meadow by Plattin Creek, arriving dangerously late like Bobby Fischer, checkmating St. Pius by the scrum’s penultimate frame. Nate Breeze caught SPX’s “Pray For Us” crowd in another hushed attention with a beautiful leap-and-snag for a key TD in the early going. Breeze kept contributing in spite of suffering a terrible hand injury in the first Jays-Lancers win.
That poor finish against Lift For Life in Week 12 has to sting, especially since JHS led the District Championship Game 14-0 against a private school whose growing vulnerability would be exposed by Valle U. in the state-playoff contest to follow. But the Varsity Blue Jays, like the rival Lancers against Caruthersville back in 2019, were trying to win Week 12’s trophy just for the hell of it, since Valle U.’s demotion to Class 2 killed the eastern half of the C2 bracket in 2023. The Olympic Athletes of Valle Catholic will be headed back to Class 3 after blowing Week 15’s halftime lead over Lamar, leaving the path open to a public-school run again.
Who replaces the excellent Kole Williams at QB? Jefferson is not unlikely to go with Cooper Frisk, a junior-to-be who netted 500+ total yards and chucked a couple of complete passes this season. It doesn’t feel like the most exciting choice compared to kids like Essien Smith taking over the reigns at schools nearby, but Frisk or another quarterback will be settled and comfy in training camp a lot earlier than in 2023’s too-nervous preparations. Blue Jay Way’s offensive line corps, brand new starters at all 5 spots, was the JHS coaches’ top reason for nail-biting their way into a glorious win streak this fall. Many of those heavyweights will be returning with a year of success and seasoning under their belts. The best news is that if Jefferson holds on and beats the next “Lift For Life” it faces in an elimination game, there won’t be anything “ceremonial” about the trophy. JHS will go onward into a bracket it can conquer, at least until-and-unless Lamar comes calling with another crew like Week 15’s.
#6 – Crystal City Hornets
As the former Texas governor Rick Perry might put it, there were 3 things that The Gridiron Geek had right about the Crystal City Hornets all along. First, that they were going to have a fine team in 2022 and ’23, and second, that they were going to have a very good defense.
And we forget the third one.
No, really, Mississippi Magazine has been caught short trying to analyze the CCHS Hornets’ longer football seasons at every turn. We said that a crazy regular-season win streak would come this fall, not right away in ’22. The Geek expected to see Nolan Eisenbeis leading a Navy-style offense in the playoffs, but QB Cale Schaumburg wound up at the helm of a trio backfield instead. Heck, TGG even sent some 2024 scouting notes to a Crystal City parent before realizing that he’d set the Junior High clubs off a year by mistake, mixing up CCHS’s Classes of ’28 and ’27. (The parent politely changed the subject to Marionville’s title bid.)
But it’s good that we were wrong about 2024, since TGG predicted in advance that next year’s Varsity High School Hornets would be a One-Man Band. Eisenbeis was supposed to be the quarterback and main outstanding rusher of a CCHS squad that would have to work OT to score enough points to win, making up for a weak defense with its Class of 2024 missing.
Whoa, was The Gridiron Geek off-base with that one! Performances from CCHS juniors, sophomores, and freshmen over the last 5 weeks have spawned an exciting new belief at Crystal City – that maybe 2024’s Hornets can pick up right where 2023 left off. In some ways, that could very well be the case. Coach Dan Fox’s roster moves turned a lot of underclass players loose to do almost as much damage in the ’23 District playoffs as seniors did.
Crystal’s rookie linemen who rocked a 5-1 record in Middle School are starting to mature, a factor that could help make up for the loss of Seth Senter and Luke Holdinghausen up front. The CCHS offensive line that tore-up Tipton on Week 12’s winning drive and 2-point play included just one senior blocker alongside Hayden Westbrook’s brigade of young big men. Schaumburg’s surprise mastery of the QB spot in a 3-man backfield points to another 2 seasons, not just one, of excellent quarterback play, but the really cool thing about the coaches’ changes in November is that now, that 3-man backfield only loses ONE guy.
We’ll miss Caden “Baker Street” Raftery’s bullish rushes and long gallops down the middle, probably even more than Navy’s Midshipmen miss fullbacks Kyle Eckel and Eric Kettani. But the Crystal City Hornets’ emerging underclass kids may just be a few more “Tipton”-style blocking efforts away from racking-up stats to compete with this year’s great rushing display. If Schaumburg is the #1 quarterback in August, he’ll get to hand-off to Eisenbeis, who the coaches seem to perceive as the “Scott Croom” of CCHS football, a guy who’s too valuable when hurting a defense with aggressive North-South running to do anything else with him presently. Ricardo Pastrana is most likely to take over the B-Back spot from Raftery, and the running back-slash-linebacker Iron Man is a kid we’ve had our eye on for a time. Cohen Compton is the speedster who could replace (if not fill) Kanden Bolton’s role in 2024.
Bolton didn’t make MSHSAA’s All-State Team in Class 1, a crime comparable to QB Cole Rickermann getting passed-over for Mississippi Area honors in winter of ’21. The snub shows that state-wide pundits weren’t paying attention to scores like “Bolton 32, Herculaneum 14” over the last 2 seasons. But even as Bolton and his fellow multi-sport star Camden Mayes’ graduations spark fear in a Crystal City pep squad that’s gotten used to the Hornets winning, turning around and finding a ’24 offensive line and backfield that’s poised for success can mean that Schaumburg’s got an easier path to success through the air as well. The CCHS ground game could be so fine-tuned by next September that senior-to-be Evan Wolfe and other receivers are wide-open for rainbow throws off of play-action fakes. If no freshman linemen steps up to play a 5th role protecting Schaumburg (or Eisenbeis) in the pocket, coaches can choose to go with a smaller, faster “pivot” player at Center or Guard, and surround him with 4 massive maulers who do most of the dirty work.
Senior-to-be Reed Lamar-Finch is a veteran who’s knocking on 200 pounds and played his way into a starting spot at OT this season, making him a candidate for that rapid-blocker’s role, along with the muscular linebacker/running back Pastrana if there’s too many rushing threats to go around again. (If that sounds like a “Rinky Dink Class 1” strategy, recall that Festus coach A.J. Ofodile has done the same thing 3 times, first with 200-pound-ish James Muellermann, additionally with C/LB Austin Schutte, and then finally with C/FB Calvin Ellis in 2023.)
On defense, Bradley’s Farm retains a stiff chunk of an 8-4 team’s wheat crop. Remember that the all-senior defensive line that beat Harrisburg in Week 11 was a midseason adjustment from Coach Fox, who had been prepared to play Raftery-Holdinghausen-Eisenbeis at linebacker and let his hefty rookies take over in the trenches. Instead, boosters got to see underclassmen shine in the linebacker role as Pastrana and Schaumburg blossomed. Eisenbeis will be a pursuit-and-tackling machine if he stays healthy next season.
But it’s on defense where Bolton and Mayes will be missed most. We’ll probably have to say goodbye to that “Eisenbeis Syndrome” we talked about, in which CCHS chases so many QBs around so fast that opposing teams go conservative, and Crystal City’s great edge-rushing defense never gets credit for any sacks or QB-pressure stats. (TGG’s correspondence with Coach Fox took a funny turn thanks to Eisenbeis Syndrome, as a blogger would keep half an eye on Crystal’s defense taking down QBs in their own backfield on Friday night, then email congratulating the HC on “all the sacks last night,” only for Fox to meekly report that there were none.) Crystal City is likely to HAVE “regular” pass-defense stats in 2024, because opponents are probable to drop on back and fire away with downfield passes, trusting that Holdinghausen isn’t there to sack their QB, and Mayes can’t intercept passes anymore.
Teams will try to mint explosive plays early after 7 PM against the ’24 Hornets, hoping to tally such a sizable lead that Crystal City’s between-the-hashes offense – that punished St. Vincent for 24:00 of a District Championship Game – will do little more than run the clock out on itself. Far from advising Coach Fox not to try half-hearted onside kicks anymore, we’ll state that he should take EVERY coin-toss opportunity to get the football first next season, with the idea that halftime leads will be like jewels in Nolan Eisenbeis’ senior year. Coming from behind, a rival can’t surprise Crystal’s young defense with long bombs, and must bear the burden of keeping Schaumburg’s attack from grinding out time-consuming drives and a victory.
There’s that CCHS numbers-crisis too, as about 10 seniors graduate with no more than 5 (maybe less) incoming kids to replace them. A dangerously small 16-man or 17-man roster size won’t hurt Crystal City that bad in Week 1, considering that CCHS’s Iron Man starting 11 remains so strong going into next season. But any rash of injuries would harm the Hornets, potentially causing the kind of tired bodies that didn’t allow 2021’s club to notch a winning record. We’re hoping that 2024’s schedule is full of similarly small-lineup teams and low-impact bouts, not because Crystal hasn’t shown it can beat big-shots, but because a campaign of trying to do so all of next year would be too costly to a beautiful team.
#7 – St. Pius Lancers
The 2024 St. Pius Lancers season gives Russell Korando and the Jefferson County Leader’s sports department a fascinating chance for a do-over with better results. JCL reporters – in The Geek’s opinion, anyway – did everything right when touting the ’23 Jefferson County season (we whiffed on Grandview’s record too) except for just one thing. They made the mistake of looking at the county’s TOP stat lines and superstar players who were graduating, without noticing those legions of sophomores and juniors who held-up those senior TD kings. So Korando’s “5 Points for 2023” included a glum note about county pigskin going downhill, because of 5 or 6 name-brand graduates. No need to recap how that prediction went.
If they make the same mistake again next summer, they could wind up having written-off 2024’s I-55 Conference Champions. Yes, it’ll be said that QB James Smith’s graduation deals SPX’s offense a blow going into next season, and The Constitution’s best passing-down “signature” Patrick Flanigan is also set to go on a Diploma in May. If a club of sleepy MSHSAA reporters, tasked with previewing 200+ Friday Night Lights schools again next year, make the same error again and just glance at the HUDL profile-view stats of the St. Pius X kids who are graduating, they’re liable to pick Hill Valley to finish in 4th place behind Perryville. But that is not how next season is going to go, as a deeper look makes SPX’s next lineup look scary.
Lancer football only graduates a handful of other seniors this time, and there’ll be a bruising junior class of linemen led by Crystal City transfer Max Nelson. Justin Lehn goes into his senior year having scored an epic 28 touchdowns and notched 14 sacks with 100+ total tackles. Lehn should become the “Nate Ruble” figure dominating headlines at St. Pius in 2024, while likely new QB Danny Degeare has the 6’3″ measurables of a classic SPX quarterback. Head coach Frank Ray may have looked impatient on a few occasions in this campaign, but there’s nothing wrong with being impatient with a loaded lineup from ’24’s opening bell onward. The best way to win the I-55 race is to take a lead in the first laps.
Even though starting by losing to Valle University 90-0 seems to work for St. Vincent.
#8 – Herculaneum Blackcats
The Geek feels as though he lived a whole lifetime reporting on Herky’s ups and downs this season. To sum it up? It’s been fun to cover the Felines. First came the surprise of summer, when a group that Mississippi Magazine had worried would be “phantoms” in ’23 came out and nearly whipped Windsor of the Show-Me Bowl runner-up Mississippi Conference in Week 1, then posted a nice shut-out win over Fredericktown that compared to Jefferson’s victory the previous week over the same team. In case that makes it sound like Herky only did well respective to the bridesmaids of MSHSAA, the Varsity Blackcats’ campaign culminated with multiple-TDs scored against the solid reserves of a truly special team, the MSHSAA Class 3 champion Park Hills Central Rebels, in a District Semifinal played following the Blackcats’ glorious upset of Kennett at Dunklin R-5.
There was heartache, dissent, and drama in between the season’s blessings at start and finish. Herky’s numbers were already on thin ice following the graduations of a seminal senior class that led HHS to a watershed winning record in 2022. When injuries struck, the Blackcats fell to the level of an average Class 1 squad. Week 8 seemed to be a breaking point as Herculaneum fell to Perryville 0-50 with Demian Light laid up in a hospital bed, coach Blane Boss tearing into his team captains in lieu of taking something constructive out of the experience. But the ‘Cats clawed their way to a #4 seed in Class 3 with an upset win over Crystal City, and soon gave Dunklin its most memorable playoff W of the decade.
Herky’s roster outlook for 2024 is more than promising. Light was among only a handful of kids in this year’s senior class; next season’s upperclass will be tons larger, and include names like Luke Brice, Anthony Galina, and QB-WR Mac Waddell. What’s really exciting, though, are HHS’s corps of big linemen who were only in Grade 9 or 10 this semester. Young bruisers Carter Light, Xander Curtis, and Will “Red” Pieper could form a nucleus that finally gives Herculaneum a tank-heavy lineup in the trenches to build around for years to come.
You can’t sleep on a small-school unit with over 10 seniors and about 20 total upperclassmen on it. But we’re not about to underrate Dunklin R-5’s athletes in 2024, having already made that mistake (right along with Herky’s head coach) prior to one special Week 10 conquest.
#9 – Windsor Owls
Windsor shares Herculaneum’s mark of 6 losses on the season, so there’s bound to be a few Owls saying “ow” thanks to this #9 ranking below a smaller school that WHS beat in a summer snoozer. But we’re getting into the “quality wins” angle of ranking this year’s bottom-half teams, and none of Windsor’s 3 other victories stack-up to Herky’s win over a classy organization like Kennett. DuBourg, DeSoto, and Cuba are the 3 meager scalps.
At least the Class 4 Show-Me Bowl showed the Mississippi Conference in fine form, arguably its best-ever considering that Festus lost to Hillsboro 29-28 in a championship contest, and North County’s been to the Final Four of Class 4 very recently. Recruited teams are fading back into the pack of state playoff contenders as well-coached and versatile public school teams prove superior to the Lutheran North-s and Duchesne-s of MSHSAA in go-time. The path is open for more of the area’s Large Schools to rise to power in Friday Night Lights. Heaven’s sake, just think of how mediocre Seckman was until just a few years ago.
Windsor’s issue right now is that you can’t shoot for the sky while grubbing along the ground. HC Jeff Funston seemed to ignore WHS’s potential as an aggressive, balanced offense in 2023 in favor of a half-baked option playbook that Funston admitted to drawing up in the process of training camp. Hopefully the coach saw from the Class 4 Show-Me Bowl that even Missouri’s best power-running teams are capable of chucking the bean out to the boundary for explosive plays. Funston might also be forced to admit that if Hillsboro had gotten its hands on some of Windsor’s veteran WRs prior to this year, they’d have made more use of them, as opposed to WHS’s nice WR corps standing with its hands in its pockets for 48:00.
Running deceptive dive-plays for most of a game does help a struggling team put away the Cuba and Bishop DuBourg type teams easier. It’s just not going to get Windsor to the next level unless the school scraps everything else and commits to a Flexbone or Pistol option playbook, drawn up in advance and taught to every class of students from Grade 6 upwards, sticking with it for many years until everything begins to click. It takes a huge investment, rather than thinking of the option-game as a well that anyone can come along can draw from. Are the Windsor coaches game-planning in order to get to .500 and hold onto their jobs, or to actually give the Owls a chance versus Hillsboro and Festus? We’ll know more following the release of Windsor’s next schedule, which doesn’t need to have any more DuBourgs on it unless the Albino Birds want to remain pale in the eyes of pundits.
#10 – Grandview Eagles
Grandview’s season is a toughie to recap, since GHS endured injuries on a “Herky” scale (no wonder that matchup was so close) by midseason, but the Eagles’ coaches did a remarkable job of keeping all such news close to the vest. The Geek had no idea until going to a late-season Grandview game and hearing the gory details from a parent, who ticked-off the program’s foul injuries to each key player, until there were many more injured names on the roster than healthy ones. GHS can look on the bright side of all the frosh and sophomore athletes who gained experience during a truly tough home-stretch, but The Gridiron Geek’s also been around enough casualty-ward Varsity seasons to know that there’s only so many positives to take away. You just have to pick up the pieces, give each ligament-sprain the proper offseason rehab, and start over again. Festus jumped right up and won a District championship after such a season in 2020, but FHS didn’t do it by dwelling on 2019.
Grandview loses its vaunted Jacob Walker-Nash Moore offensive backfield to graduation along with close to 10 other seniors. That has to hurt. However, much like Herky and Crystal City next season, the Birds of Prey still get to build around a hulking OL-DL corps that’s only now starting to mature. Sophomore DT Tucker Rhinehart’s 43 total tackles in 10 games demonstrate that the big man could become GHS’s immovable rock in the middle of Big River. Grandview’s second-leading RB Wyatt Keim is also still an underclassman. There could be less than 5 seniors on the ’24 roster, but the strong numbers of freshmen and sophomores who’ve already contributed show that the ratio of kids going out for pigskin is going up.
#11 – Northwest Lions
Once again, the focus on a quality win seals the deal for these bottom rankings, and there’s only a couple of combined victories on the slate for DeSoto and Northwest over Bishop DuBourg and Mehlville respectively. Who would win if the 2 victims played a game?
DuBourg is getting better under a new coaching staff, and watching the Cavaliers play the Mehlville Panthers would make a curiously fun matchup on YouTube. Live Stream STL would probably broadcast it. But the winless Panthers were a sturdy enough Class 5 lineup to make just a little noise against Oakville and Parkway South, and DuBourg’s only win over a Large School (Affton) isn’t on that scale of achievement, as Affton falls behind Confluence Prep of 2022 as the worst Class 4 brand in the entire region, losing to awful Normandy 38-8. We award the Fantasy matchup to Mehlville and the higher ranking to 1-9 Northwest.
#12 – DeSoto Dragons
That opening 3 quarters against Cape Central were more impressive than DeSoto’s head coach Russ Schmidt let on. But the skipper’s most important accomplishment for 2023 is that there’s now close to 30 freshmen and sophomores listed on DeSoto’s HUDL roster. Repeat that on-campus recruiting feat for the next 2 classes of new DHS enrollees, and Joachim Junction will boast Hillsboro-level roster numbers before you can say “Right Hire.”