#1 – Festus Tigers
Jefferson County is getting tired of watching its teams play too cautiously in the Show-Me Bowl. It’s happened so often in a row that HCs have invented weird slogans to justify it. When the Herky Blackcats had their absolute best chance to win a Class 3 trophy in 1995, the head coach Stan Helms refused to key on a 4-Star tailback from Seneca, telling Regional Radio that “Aw, as soon as you key on one guy, another one will get you.” (It’s a good thing Herky ’95 didn’t have to play Warrenton *2024* in the state semifinals, and refuse to do anything about a running back and a Wildcat named Austin Haas. That’s a mistake, in the snow or in the sunshine.) Seneca was losing the line-of-scrimmage to Ben Grady and the Blackcats, but pitched out to its “4-Star” about 200 times on 3rd down and won by a handful. Last year when the Hillsboro Hawks made it to Mizzou, the Hillsboro coaches handled everything better and maintained their identity on offense and defense, BUT the Blue & White’s decision makers in the kicking game gagged on Columbia’s curry and would not let Nick Marchetti’s awesome leg give Hillsboro anything but horrible real-estate to work from. Marchetti, after nailing so many kickoffs for touchbacks over star-struck faces of Mississippi Conference opponents, was told to boot “Fake On-Side Kicks” that really go 20 yards and cannot be recovered easily. Kearney High, the state championship hopeful from north of Kansas City, snatched those fake kickoffs and turned them into real nice gainers, starting in fantastical field-position close to Hillsboro’s goal-line again and again. Hillsboro’s defense never had a fair chance, because coaches were so worried about KHS kick-returns for TDs (on touchbacks?!) that they hardly noticed an ugly scoreboard.
At least we won’t have 28 years to wait this time. Festus and Hillsboro going to back-to-back Week 15s is validation for both teams and a sign that the region south of St. Louis is becoming the Midwest’s newest hotbed in a hurry. It is strange that some locals still disdain seeing mentions of Festus or Hillsboro’s biggest rival in each team’s previews during a season. There must be no denying that Hillsboro ’24’s legacy will involve coming within a few yards of taking a Show-Me Bowl squad (Festus) to overtime. The Festus Tigers of *2023* should take pride in coming within 2 points – and Luke Wacker’s field-goal try that never was – from eliminating the Show-Me Bowl runners-up from Leon Hall in the District Final. Gosh, there is good in that for both clubs, isn’t there? Hillsboro and Festus are lifting each other to new heights on Fridays. Highway A’s a scary road trip for 12+ total teams (we hope) per year now.
The 2025 Festus Tigers season will be similar to 2024’s campaign in ways that do not involve “hope.” We don’t have to hope that next year’s starting lineup will look as skilled and dynamic as this season’s, since we already know. QB Parker Perry is everything you would want in a junior quarterback, and The Geek has found it masterful how Coach O’s staff worked Perry into the starting-11 offense just enough to manufacture some of the ’24 regular season’s best aerial highlights, without feeling compelled to go back to 2022-23’s circus act of dual-starter QBs. RBs Leauntae Williams (are we spelling his first name right…finally?) and Kamden Yates could make a phenomenal 1-2 punch in the offensive backfield. There’ll be a pair of brothers named “Stucke” whose hands Perry’s passes are about to be st-U-cking to. Those boys are also poised to help make up for losses of superb defensive backs like Lacey, Edwards, and Davis-Mayes to 2025’s graduations, though Festus can return DBs David Russell and Jackson Frank as seniors to helm the secondary. Meanwhile, the ’25 Varsity Tigers could look – GULP! – older, stronger, and even more effective in positions along the line at which FHS was inexperienced this fall. Connor Rush and Mason Weinhaus are near-300 lb. blockers who will vie to replace 2024’s senior offensive tackles like “Zeke” Cristobal. Elsewhere, 6’2″ underclassman Eli Tilley is this autumn’s “Carson Grass” prodigy who can flourish as a Kearney-style “reach” blocker alongside 5’11” thumpers like Grass, Weinhaus, and Rush, the latter of whom earned backup duty on 2024’s superstar D-Line. Antonio Pinkston, merely a sophomore at present, is the long-term pass rusher that R-6 has needed forever. He won’t necessarily be an OL + DL Iron Man – he’ll just drop a lot of opposing QBs like stones. Tall, talented Tight Ends like Aiden Clifton and Braydon Wilkes will give Perry still more weapons in a 3rd-down scenario.
Is there a fly in the ointment? Oh, yeah, a great big one, already buzzing enough to make long-retired athletes like Ofodile and Jim “Ox” Sardo scurry like Walter White to try to swat it. Put bluntly, the FANTASTIC depth of Festus Football in 2024 is going bye-bye. It is flying the coop, leaving town on a bus like Jeff Bridges left Anarene, hopping the last boat to Brazil…you name it. The irony of Festus R-6’s season is that while the ’24 Tigers were lucky to avoid injury to 90% of the starting lineup, Black & Gold didn’t really need to be lucky in that way to win 10+ times. The whole ’24 defensive line could’ve twisted their ankles in a bizarre study-hall incident on Thursday before a game, and hungry backups who weigh as much as Rob Turner would’ve stepped in to succeed. If Williams had gone down at some point, Ofodile could have then chosen between Schirmer, Yates, Smith, or others to take a primary rusher’s load of carries. But if Yates and Williams’ backfield is wounded in 2025, there will not be another 1-2 punch to replace them. It’s also scary that ZERO of the program’s Junior Varsity linemen weighed-in at 200+ pounds in 2024’s training camp. That’s next year’s backups and they’d better fill out a LOT by September, or Black & Gold will have to keep defensive starters on the field for 48:00 no matter what the score is, since all 9 opponents (even Windsor) will outweigh the backups. Laborious injury woes would have been a nuisance for 2024’s Tigers. In 2025, a rash of injury could ravage the season.
The Gridiron Geek likes how Tiger Stadium’s schedule sets up for next year. Yes, it’s daunting to have the Jackson Indians visiting on Senior Night. You can also think of more fun ways to begin a Show-Me Bowl follow-up season than visiting Rolla, though Week 1 of 2025 just got way more thrilling for Rolla High School after following the FHS Tigers’ exploits of Weeks 11 through 14. Visiting the North County Raiders in October is never easy, yet October’s road trip to DeSmet will be F-U-N for the Festus Tigers if there ever was such a thing, for 2 reasons. It’ll be the campus of the newest #1 team in Missouri, which just-so-happened to have a barnburner with Black & Gold 8 weeks prior to winning the title. Also…the Tigers won’t have to deal with Dillon Duff anymore.
Meanwhile, the ’25 squad’s first home game will be a comfortable matchup versus Francis Howell North. Hillsboro and Farmington each have to visit Midmeadow Lane in the fall. Best of all, fans can anticipate a slate in which the typically lopsided wins, such as the DeSoto contest, will actually be a lot tougher and tighter, while many favored opponents may well be playing-off hangovers, utilizing new and less star-studded lineups against FHS. It could be a Tigers season of 9 perfectly winnable games *AND* 9 undeniably losable games at the same time, the type of “NFL” scenario that administrators love to see at the Varsity level.
#2 – Seckman Jaguars
What will it take for Imperial to break down Jackson’s wall, or another team’s wall, in District playoffs to come? Superstar rushers like Cole Ruble couldn’t turn the trick. This year’s Seckman passing game was a minor revelation which helped to score those 28 points on Jackson, but the Jaguars remained too thin on the boundary to play run-and-gun pigskin, and have enough left in the tank to stop the Indians’ great receivers. In TGG’s opinion, it’s going to take a Seckman line that can WIN the LOS vs Jackson.
Don’t look now, but the Seckman Jaguars may have one of those in 2025. This autumn’s Seckman Blocks of Granite is one of the depth charts that Mississippi Magazine assumed must be OLDER than it actually was in 2024, until going back at the end of this season to double check. Baer will lose a couple of big thumpers with the 2025 senior class, but the Jaguars’ partial HUDL roster alone is evidence that SHS could be hitting a high-point in size, power, and leadership in the trenches, just as quarterback Brody Kube turns an upperclassman himself. Seckman’s class of senior bigs could include 265 lb. OL Ben Eplin, 240 lb. center Carson Schutte, and Dylan Lappe, the powerful edge-rusher who sacked 4 opposing QBs in ’24. Coach Baer’s new junior class is more intimidating yet, with 3 more offensive linemen (and potential Iron Man defensive players) totaling about 850 lbs. of mass to spare already. Plenty of underclass RBs, including the sophomore Chance Ruble, rivaled Brady Ambrose’s YPC average this campaign. Receiving will be a critical piece of the puzzle if Seckman’s going to build its most bullish and dynamic attack to go along with a dominating defense. As a junior, the DB Jackson Compton could be asked to replace WR Devin Gosser’s catches on offense.
T-3 – Fox Warriors
Much like Seckman, the Fox Warriors could hit the peak of a talent cycle in 2025. Arnold already has a head start on playing with a “replacement” QB in Chandler Price, who’ll be a real-deal senior starter with 600+ rushing yards under his belt. D.J. Cox, Jude Pribish, and Antonio Jarillo are among the skill performers set to return as upperclassmen. Charlie Chapman returns at LB. Liabilities that could “return” with those ‘ballers include Fox’s total lack of a passing game after just 21 attempts all year.
TGG will make an educated guess Arnold’s coaches are happy about the hulking size of some of the linemen coming up to Grade 11 and 12. If the Warriors intend to make a run at Suburban League hardware while passing for less than 50 YPG with a running specialist at QB, they’ll need to replace Payton Younger’s mobile, veteran presence with new OL blockers who can move, and execute the Flexbone flawlessly. We know the size of hosses like Pribish is going to help the Warrior defense along the way.
T-3 – Hillsboro Hawks
Funny enough Hillsboro and Fox are tied in the Power Poll this offseason. Hillsboro’s line corps joins Fox’s in needing to get more athletic in a hurry, but the Hawks’ lack of movement with substitutes on the field showed up as a weakness on defense more than on offense. The Perryville Pirates upset Hillsboro in the playoffs by moving Kayd Luckey around and getting the egg to the edge, as HHS’s banged-up defensive line couldn’t recover and pursue when Barrett Wheeler got into the flat. Perryville, to make the story stranger, tried its first 5 or 6 plays for Wheeler right up the middle in its next, unsuccessful turn vs Festus in the District championship. Perryville’s play-callers must have imagined they were JCAA coaches at the Show-Me Bowl, or something.
Blue & White will be back, with a vengeance. Fans are worried about Hillsboro’s graduations, as usual, but to The Geek’s eye, Hillsboro’s got even more upperclass numbers to spare in the year upcoming than it did 2 classes ago. The program just keeps growing. Braxton Chazelle should make an outstanding senior QB for the Hawks, a lively offensive team to the bitter end this go-around, if Hillsboro wisely decides to stick with the kid who made it all work from behind center in November when analysts all thought HHS would go the other direction, and play far more defense-minded pigskin without Preston Brown. Hillsboro’s most pressing concern will be to replace 4+ skill positions, given the producers like Chris Duncan and Ian Phillips moving on, but recall seasons such as 2023 (not that long ago, after all), in which the Varsity Hawks retooled everywhere and came out with a more indomitable group than the year before. We’d be less confident if Jackson Marks, a tackling machine for Hillsboro’s defense, wasn’t coming back as a senior for Bill Sucharski, or if HHS wasn’t planning an easier start than MICDS + SLUH for 2025.
#5 – Desoto Dragons
DeSoto and Northwest are chasing one another up the Jefferson County Power Poll. It’s so weird to think that one year ago at this time, we were ranking the same 2 schools side-by-side right at the BOTTOM of the JCPP, with Northwest getting a slight nod over HC Russ Schmidt and the DeSoto Dragons. 12 months later, and WOW. DeSoto and Northwest combined for 10 wins in 18 bouts during the 2024 regular season, displaying their finest offenses in many years to rise to top-half in a prestigious county’s rankings.
Joachim Junction may not have an issue getting to 4-2 prior to visiting Hillsboro in Week 7 next fall. 2025 will be Eli Thebeau and Brenton Drummond’s senior follow-up to a season of 2000 total yards and about 20 combined TDs. DeSoto’s fancy rushing attack manufactured a stellar 5+ yards-per-carry in 2024, but the truly amazing stats are the numbers like QB Austin Missey’s 200+ yards and 3 touchdowns-scored on the ground. Missey spent underclass years in which “negative” QB-rush yardage was commonplace with DeSoto’s ailing offense on any given Friday. Now, the QB run is clicking for Schmidt’s play-callers alongside everything else.
The best thing about 2025’s season – from this far out – looks to be that the Mississippi Conference could be a 5-way fight. That’s a FREAKISH scenario for a conference in which there’s usually 1-2 great teams, maybe a spoiler hanging around, and 2-3 hapless cupcakes on a season. Friday Night Lights has a way of pulling everything back into its proper orbit, making it quite possible that Hillsboro and Festus will kick everybody’s butts again, with North County (once again) as the conference’s only spoiler threat. But following the events of this campaign, TGG isn’t so sure, since DeSoto ended up making upset bids versus Hillsboro *and* Bonne Terre, and Windsor came so close to inking its top upset-win of the decade thus far when the Owls lost to the Raiders 14-12. What should make the difference between a “Crazy 5-Way Melee” and another dull, 2-or-3-teams-only Mississippi Conference race in ’25 is whether DeSoto and Windsor can play physical football in the trenches all the way to Week 7. If 2025’s Fox Warriors are big and hoping to be fast, the DeSoto Dragons are “fast hoping to be big,” not yet having developed substantial numbers of bigs in the trenches apart from a VERY well-numbered Sophomore class that Schmidt has coming. DeSoto’s first string may rely on a vanishingly thin O-Line roster, making it great news that the strong, quick OG Collin Barton has already shined at age 15.
T-6 – Northwest Lions
There’s no question that the Northwest Lions will be bigger and faster in 2025. Wide receiver Wes Knuckles is among the 2024 roster’s only marquee graduations to come. Connor Viehland will be missed as a veteran QB and Iron Man tackler, but no one else in the departing class really stood out on the stat sheet for Cedar Hill in 2024. That means Northwest could be primed for one of those super-rare Varsity seasons in which the lineup stays the same, but the kids all develop a year older. It’s way better for a school’s win-loss record than when a college program has that happen with its 20-something kids who don’t grow nearly as fast anymore. Maybe it’s why Northwest folks were so adamant about playing the sophomores and juniors in ’24. Cedar Hill has a squad filled with 2025’s juniors and seniors waiting to take flight soon, so why not get that plane on the runway. Coach Scott Gerling squandered NHS’s summer hot streak with game-management errors, yet improved along with his squad later on.
So, why is Northwest ranked below DeSoto, a brand that’s 2 enrollment classes lower, and which merely matched Cedar Hill’s improved record of 5-5? This particular Power Poll is a look ahead to 2025, for sure, but it’s also a place to give credit for 2024’s stretch run. DeSoto put the type of month-long consistent streak together at season’s end that Northwest-CH could never quite produce, with the former school’s 10-point loss to North County standing superior to Northwest’s final 3-TD loss to Oakville for now. But this next upcoming Northwest Lions team will have the upperclass to surpass all Class 4 bids with a great showing.
T-6 – St. Pius Lancers
Gosh, how can Mississippi Magazine sum that St. Pius Lancers season up in a rankings blurb? It was a study in mixed emotions, contrasts, and paradoxes from start to finish. St. Pius the Tenth was thrown out of JCAA sports by the 10,000,000th cabal of local administrators to ever act petty and childish, but by the end of an adventurous season, the Lancers joined the ranks of programs who’re known and accepted in SEC country, also growing a wider relationship with MSHSAA overall. 2024’s season performance stands much the same, as St. Pius failed and flailed versus a mighty schedule and produced only a 5-6 mark, but any fair-headed spectators feel what the Lancers showed in big matchups against tougher competition this year. In fact, the Lancers were arguably just a few lost-fumbles away from going 7-4 and reaching a battle at Bowling Green for a District championship. St. Pius football fans are experienced enough to know that Frank Ray’s second squad would’ve gone 6-3 or 7-2 and seeded highly against a “normal” schedule of Hill Valley’s old rivals. But just look at where St. Pius has landed on the Power Poll above Jefferson.
The bookends are there for 2025 to be a winning campaign, with or without a slate of giants to contend with along the way. Baylor will not face St. Pius next season, as The Geek’s college-vs-Varsity comparisons going into the Lancers’ Week 8 trip totally whiffed on the fact that football programs like Lindenwood and St. Pius X aren’t yet big enough to always demand home-and-home style dates, and have to accept what “TV Games” they can get for the time being. At the same time, The Geek hears that St. Pius has a plan to replace that celebration vibe of late 2024 with a Senior Night event that might blow everybody’s socks off. Meanwhile the Senatobia road trip will be replaced by a local and beatable opponent in September, giving Hill Valley’s kids a clearer path to winning 6+ regular-season games instead of 4. Last, and most critically, SPX will FINALLY be stocked with veterans in ’25.
It appears that the underclassman OL Carter Cain will become the 250+ lb. thumper that Coach Ray has badly needed on the front lines, to go with his many athletic 180-220 pound blocking weapons. Even more exciting than Cain’s sophomore addition to the offensive line is his potential tryout at Defensive Tackle or Nose Guard for the Varsity’s top string in summer. If that audition is successful, we could be staring at a SCARY St. Pius defense, with more freedom than ever to turn all its fast linebacker-sized mercenaries loose on the prowl to attack the football. Defense was already a strong suit with the sophomore lineup of 2024. Additional size, strength, and a lively junior class ought to crank that advantage “up to 11” next year, to where a Class-3-and-up schedule of foes isn’t so intimidating.
#8 – Crystal City Hornets
Enjoy it while you can, City Limits dwellers! Crystal City’s current #8 ranking over #9 Jefferson High School is a “momentum” ranking based on the Varsity Hornets’ superior playoff bid. Crystal’s crew qualified as District seed #2 with a terrific Senior Night victory and went on a high-scoring run to Round 4 of the Class 1 postseason, while the Jefferson Blue Jays found themselves outscored 75-47 in 2 District games, and eliminated by Week 11. Still, there are 2024-25’s graduations to take into account.
Once we get to 2025’s training camp and Nolan Eisenbeis is no longer a Crystal City student, The Geek will have to conclude that QB Cooper Frisk is a more seasoned alternative to whichever newbie starter takes over the QB spot for the Hornets. At that point, Jefferson will be ranked ahead of Crystal City in the Power Poll again without either squad having played a down on the season.
Consider, though, that ranking #8 or #9 in Jefferson County is more prestigious than ranking #6 used to be. Last year, our highest-ranking teams like Hillsboro, Seckman, and Festus got even better, while this season, formerly low-ranking Large Schools like Northwest and DeSoto threw themselves a revival party and got above .500. Now there isn’t one program in the Dirty Dozen that isn’t at least a potential spoiler in a big game. Herky, our supposedly “worst” team at the moment, upset-defeated Crystal City AND Kennett consecutively in late 2023, sending the latter club on a downward spiral like KHS hasn’t suffered in decades. Make no mistake, ranking Top 10 is no longer easy for any Class 1 bid. CCHS can keep it up, but the Hornets will be in need of a QB.
Quarterbacks are the focus of most pigskin reporting, and that QB position will be the first thing on the minds of Bradley’s Farm boosters in the 2024-25 offseason. Crystal City’s offense, packed with seniors and flanked by the best roster-numbers CCHS has been poised to reveal in many years, sets up like gangbusters for 2025, except for one small problem. Nolan Eisenbeis, and his senior backup Evan Wolfe are graduating, and no one is sure that 2024’s other backup QB Landyn DeRousse makes the best fit behind center. That leaves the Hornets with an uncomfortable choice to make, and a whole QB depth-chart to fill up very quickly.
DeRousse has had plenty of promising snaps at quarterback, but The Geek thinks sticking him behind center would be a bad idea unless Crystal City goes to a Shotgun “college”-style offense with Landyn running one way, and Rico Pastrana threatening to run the other way. 2025’s upperclass OL has a chance to block really, really well, and to take one of CCHS’s 2 most explosive senior rushers away from the running back spot would be to jerk one of the Hornets’ strong suits out of the picture. If Pastrana was trying out for 2025’s quarterback role with a great Junior High resume at the position, The Geek would have to write the same thing. The combination of DeRousse and Pastrana at RB will be as important to Crystal City’s success as the Williams-Yates duo will be key to Festus High’s success running the rock next year. Crystal must fit the pieces together without sacrificing that potent 1-2 punch. Going back to a “Triple-Option” style to get DeRousse-the-QB running would also be risky without a suitable injury-replacement.
Try not to spend the offseason dwelling on it, because CCHS coaches should be focusing elsewhere. 2025’s front-7 may be a Murderer’s Row of juniors and seniors, given that David Parham, Hayden Westbrook, and Jacob Loveless are all turning seniors, while Gabe McPherson, Trent Eisenbeis, and Elias Miller should all have Driver’s Licenses by the next time we hear from them. Partner those 6 bruisers with linebackers like Pastrana, Alex Kuchera, Riley Hendrickson, and DeRousse, and now we’re talking about a Crystal City team that’s as strong in the trenches as 2023’s squad that outlasted Tipton in Week 12. If the ’25 coaching staff focuses on rebuilding a great defense first, the job of next year’s rookie quarterback at Sunken Place will get 10x easier.
#9 – Jefferson Blue Jays
Well, how did it go in the first year of the Quad County Conference, the brainchild (mostly) of Herculaneum and Jefferson bosses? There was a lot of good and a lot of bad. It’s good that there are no 100% weak-sister teams left in the old “I-55” field that’s been included, and it’s certainly a positive that Cuba didn’t turn out to be as lousy in its first QCC season as it has the recent past. The Gridiron Geek has heard it said that “Perryville has no business in the QCC,” but does not agree with that. The league’s pair of Perryville teams were the best thing Jefferson’s new conference had on the field in 2024. If you welcome Class 3 programs like Bayless and Class 4 teams like Perryville, you have to be prepared for either of them to have a really good year in their own weight class, and when that happens, they’ll probably win the conference title. But that’s okay. The bigger problem for the Blackcats and Blue Jays is that they’ve watched their own invention get dominated by schools from outside Jeff County.
If we’re going to change the conference, we have to be good enough to compete in it. Perryville’s teams not only ran roughshod over the Dirty Dozen (or the 3 Amigos) in QCC games, but the newcomers from Cuba embarrassed Grandview in a Week 3 upset. We’ve got 3 teams in the QCC and they’re ranked 9, 10, and 12 in the JCPP. We weakened ourselves by pushing St. Pius out.
If no other county team from the QCC turns it around next season, there’s still a good chance that Jefferson will. The Blue Jays will head into 2025 with a class of senior BIGS that looks more menacing than usual, keyed by a massive senior Nose Guard in Aiden Allen. Cooper Frisk should be delighted with his returning upperclass weapons on the boundary. Best of all, Jefferson is poised to play 3 consecutive home games to begin 2025’s “flip-flop” schedule, followed by a winnable 3-date road trip to Cuba, Bayless, and Perryville, with the PHS Pirates losing about 20 seniors and stranding Kayd Luckey with an upperclass of only 15 student-athletes. Perryville High was considered a “weak link” in local conference play just 3 years ago. Give everything more time to balance out.
Final 2024 QCC Shopping Network Standings
Sam Vincent’s Indian Churns (6-0, 12-1)
Perry’s Villas (5-1, 10-2)
Jefferson Food Bays (4-2, 6-5)
Cuba Cigars (Limited) (3-3, 4-6)
Grand View Grapple Gear (2-4, 4-6)
Blackcat Furs & Accessories (1-5, 1-9)
Bayless Shoe (0-6, 2-8)
T-10 – Grandview Eagles
Grandview is another team that The Gridiron Geek assumed was WAY older than it was in 2024. Heck, Grandview’s HUDL roster list of “2025” graduates is so short, you’d think that the Frosh Cheerleaders uploaded all of the info (it happens) and either messed everything up or are trolling everybody. But scrolling through GHS’s roster reveals no phony “Andre the Giant” or “One-Man Gang” heights and weights – just the LEGIT sizes of a Grandview O/D-line that could finally arrive large, mean, mobile, AND experienced enough to play more consistent pigskin in Tucker Rhinehart’s senior campaign. Brendan Martin and the entire skill-player corps is returning, a fortunate turn for Jason Kimminau’s coaching staff in more ways than one. Kimminau was criticized (ahem) for going cautious in a playoff game at St. Pius that Grandview could not win without letting Martin’s offense perform wide-open. With the upcoming Grandview Eagles team ready to boast a senior QB and a 1-2 punch of RBs Wyatt Keim and Isaac Walker again, the controversy is most likely a moot point for 2025. Any coach’s instinct will be to let a 17-year-old set of stars take more chances. Grandview will lose a pair of brutalizing blockers in Jacob Hassos and Michael Pemberton to graduation, but at least a relatively small school of Jefferson County gets to call Northwest and brag, “Same team, year older huh? We’ve got one of those too!!!”
The Geek’s other gripe of “no consistency” in GHS Football needs an asterisk too. Recall that our Bluehost website screwed up Grandview High’s early-season coverage (my bad!) to the point of calling Chaffee “Cuba” and Cuba “Chaffee” (do they even sell cigars in Chaffee?) and while Grandview’s worst performance of the year may have come at Cuba in Week 3, the site’s 50+ point whiff on the prediction for Grandview-Cuba was less a syndrome of “Sand Creek vs Bonners Ferry” and more of The Geek having dropped his football pundit’s fundamentals in a spillway. Cuba had only beaten Linn, a Junior Varsity lineup for 2024, by 35 points in the Cigars’ opener. Then Cuba lost to Clever, a team that had lost 20 times in a row in 2022-23. We therefore assumed that the Cuba squad with its “quarterback” and “wide formation” was a lot like John F. Kennedy, a St. Louis program from the 1990s that tossed the ball from sideline-to-sideline all night without penetrating the end zone against solid defenses from Jefferson County. However, fans know that Week 1 outcomes are misleading, because that “cupcake” you played could turn out to be pretty good. When the Cuba-Clever contest occurred, IT WAS LIKE A WEEK 1 GAME because Cuba hadn’t played a real Varsity team yet! Meanwhile, the Clever Blue Jays smartly (get it?) went on to have a 5-4 campaign, wouldn’t you know. So, Clever wasn’t an unbelievably bad loss for Cuba after all, and Cuba’s “35-0” vs Linn only happened because of the “DeSoto vs Herky 2024” syndrome in which kids can’t believe they’re winning by a Turbo Clock. Cuba’s 3 conference wins were no accident at all.
What’s the x-factor that could get Grandview over the hump against Jefferson R-7, the powerhouse Quad County Conference rival who the Birds of Prey have come tantalizingly close to taking down since 2022? Mississippi Magazine would love to see a lively, numerous, and enthusiastic Frosh or Sophomore class of kids show up to add a spark and some depth to the second-string. That’s what helped Kanden Bolton’s 12-strong upperclass corps produce Crystal City’s critical winning streaks of 2022 and 2023. Fortunately, what this year’s GHS underclass lacked in sheer numbers, it made up for with speed and promising play-making. Sophomores Quinton Byers and Brook Poole led the receiving corps with 23 catches, snagging 3 TD passes from Martin. Christian Volner, only a freshman in 2024, had a phenomenal year on defense, with double-digit tackles in 10 games.
T-10 – Windsor Owls
How’s the Windsor underclass doing? It’s almost a trick question, because the Windsor Owls were in such a clean-slate rebuilding mode under head coach Lee Freeman in 2024 that the whole team might as well have been an underclass team. WHS played with the level of “consistency” of a Grade 10 squad all season. How else do you explain giving-up 32 points to lowly Clayton while limiting North County to just 2 touchdowns? Giving up 41 points in a loss to Fredericktown, then stuffing a similar offense from Bayless a week later? Windsor’s relatively tight playoff loss to Perryville gave the Festus Tigers confidence that the District championship-bid Pirates were Week 12’s paper tiger, but that 2-point loss to NCHS stands far above every other battle.
Once again, there could be misplaced focus on the QB spot this offseason. Lee Freeman will have to replace the senior QB Luke Patterson, and yet the success of 2025’s newcomer will already depend on how Freeman’s youngsters perform after hopping-up to major Varsity roles. The Albino Birds had a tiny senior class and a not-very-big junior class on the field for the last 10 games, making 2025’s upperclass corps larger by process-of-elimination. But there were SO many sophomores who’ve flourished, if quietly, for Windsor during Freeman’s first go-around, that WHS almost can’t help but put a sturdier ’25 team on the gridiron.
#12 – Herculaneum Blackcats
Are the Herculaneum Blackcats going to stick with head coach Blane Boss after all? There’s been no word out of Blackcat Drive about a long-rumored coaching move that could make Crystal City’s old CEO Dan Fox into the new HC at Herculaneum. But the ideal time to fire a head coach is right at the end of their last campaign, and Boss has thus-far remained safe on a very hot seat.
Could it be Herky’s administration agrees with Boss that “they just need a new group” to come in and make the Blackcats’ team captaincies better? It would be a neat trick if the current HC convinced Clint Freeman and others of that, since Herculaneum was supposed to have already culled-out its kids who “don’t understand how to win” at the end of the 2023 season. Then came Keaton “Deets” Reeves’ first year as an upperclass starting QB, and Boss’ team laid an egg with a dreary offense and a flaky defensive effort. How many lineups in a row can Boss blame losing on before getting the axe? We’ll all have to wait and see.