Hooray! Mississippi Magazine’s readers have no idea how happy The Geek is to have been wrong about the Class 6, District 1 semifinals. We thought that an Oakville victory over Northwest last Friday night, by any final score, would help Oakville crack District 1’s top three and leave the Northwest Lions to take the #4 seed, scuttling a Seckman-Northwest playoff rematch that TGG told both teams to “save it all” for back in Week 7. Oakville did defeat Northwest 10-7 in a frustrating outing for Cohenn Stark and the Varsity Lions. Miraculously, the final Week 10 regular-season standings have worked out in exactly the right quirky way to set the Lions and Jaguars against each other in The Valley.
Northwest, Seckman, and Oakville – by some calculus that no one claims to understand – all finished the slate within .45 of a point of each other in the District 1 standings. Jackson, which has scored a touchdown on every play from scrimmage for a total of 7,047 points this season, is of course ranked #1 in the District after nine games and 1000.47 touchdowns scored. Below the Varsity Indians is a total logjam. But because Northwest has .32 more points than Seckman and .45 more points than Oakville, the Lions were natural #2 seeds which had to be jumped over for the #2 tournament slot by Seckman, thanks to the Jaguars’ convincing win over the Lions in Week 3. Oakville now has a head-to-head win over Northwest too. However, a Missouri team cannot be jumped over twice in bracket seeding. Northwest gets to stand firm at #3 with the unlucky Oakville Tigers drawing #4.
Class 6, District 1 Tournament Seeds and Opening Round Games
Week 10 District Quarterfinals (October 31):
#4 Oakville Tigers vs #5 Lindbergh Flyers
Week 11 District Semifinals (November 7):
#1 Jackson Indians vs #4 Oakville Tigers OR #5 Lindbergh Flyers
#2 Seckman Jaguars vs #3 Northwest Lions
So, now that we’re 100% positively sure Seckman and Northwest are having a winner-take-all rematch in November, who should be favored to win the darn thing? Seckman has the obvious argument of having destroyed Northwest back in Week 3, riding a career night from quarterback Brody Kube, whose four TD passes easily outshone Stark’s 10-108-1-1 stat line. Seckman got Northwest to cough the ball up, flub tackles at the worst times, and take penalty flags just when the Jags seemed to need them. Seckman just won its fifth Orange division Suburban League title; Orange you glad there are enough good local teams to keep up with a powerhouse like The Valley Northwest’s lost to Seckman every year since 2020 and none of the scrums have been particularly close. To top it off, Seckman’s home field crowd is large enough to be a third-down noise weapon for the Jaguar defense.
Look deeper, though, and Week 11’s matchup gets more intriguing. Northwest has looked utterly comparable to Seckman against common opponents since that day, if you discount the Webster Groves team that was decent in midseason before falling off a cliff by the time Imperial’s boys saw them last Friday. The Lions unexpectedly trounced the Fox Warriors with a superb performance from Stark and a huge night for senior wideout Omarion Frazier. Recall that it took the Jaguars more than four quarters to vanquish the Warriors. More importantly, a Cedar Hill defense on which The Geek worried that the seniors were too small loomed plenty large against Fox’s bullish ground game, stumping Arnold’s attack to signify a revival for Northwest’s defense as well as its offense. Oakville is a pain in the neck right now, but its two contests against Cedar Hill and Imperial went very similar.
What’s changed for Northwest’s long-suffering defense in such a short time? Namely, the Lions’ tacklers are being more disruptive, putting more pressure on the QB and making life hard for signal-callers like Max Bradley, who had a “rough night in victory” with 0 TDs and 2 INTs in Oakville’s 10-7 squeaker of a win over Northwest last Friday night. It gives the NHS defensive backs a chance to take a step back – literally – and survey the field instead of falling victim to the rapid catch-and-runs that Seckman used to terrorize Week 3’s visitors. Jeremiah Clines and Jacob Hartle have combined for six sacks and two of the Lions’ impressive 10 fumble recoveries in 2025. NHS’s suddenly tough defense is manufacturing takeaways, another fact of anxious concern for a methodical Seckman offense that will probably need 12-to-15 plays to net scoring drives in Week 11.
Meanwhile, the Seckman Jaguars defense has shown more cracks than anticipated. It was Nick Baer’s second string that gave up a horrendous first-half TD to Hazelwood West, a team that the Hayti Indians could shut out if they put their minds to it. But it was the first string that let Oakville’s offense control the bean, and which let Pattonville scamper all over the field. in a split pair of scrums as September turned to October. Northwest’s offense is clearly comparable to Oakville’s and Pattonville’s. If the Lions defense can contain the Seckman offense, not allowing the Jags the big plays that smote Cedar Hill on 9/12, we like Drew Spratt’s chances to plunge for some ball-control drives of the Lions’ own.
Will the winner of Week 11’s showdown have any prayer against Jackson in the District Championship Game? Jackson, having scored a touchdown on every play from scrimmage this season, rolled right over a Class 4 contender 62-21 in last Friday’s defeat of the Festus Tigers. QB Drew Parsons’ scoring drives are averaging 14 seconds each, probably because the Indians haven’t had a 2nd down (or a huddle) while scoring their 7,047 points on the year. However, The Geek is curious to see if Oakville forces any 1:00+ possessions out of Jackson in Week 11’s other battle, assuming that Lindbergh’s late-year improvement doesn’t lead to a Flyers upset of the Tigers on Halloween.
You watch Jackson score on every play perform against its Large Schools schedule and wonder why there aren’t more Class 6 championships on the Indians’ mantle. Jackson was knocked out by CBC and Kirkwood the last two postseasons before it could get to the Show-Me Bowl. Before that, Jackson couldn’t even reach the Class 5 Show-Me Bowl thanks to getting beaten in the playoffs by Webb City (no shock) and Poplar Bluff (BIG shocker!). One reason is because the Indians’ 48:00 hurry-up offense is like a sprint car that looks fantastic when it’s speeding but tumbles into a crash as soon as somebody throws a wrench in it. Another is that once the playoffs start, Jackson plays with a target on its back. Festus couldn’t afford to play Week 9 like it was an elimination game, but Oakville will certainly compete with desperation at The Pit in Week 11. If Parsons tosses another 70 touchdown passes against the Tigers, we’ll know that Seckman or Northwest will need to score 82 points to win in Week 12. But that’s not necessarily how things will go.
It’s also unlucky for District 1’s winner that District 2 comes up so often in the Al-Gore-Rhythm that pairs opponents in the state Q-Finals. District 2 is the “pipeline” through which a Class 6 state chamoion is likely to come this season. CBC will face the winner of Marquette’s visit to the defending champion DeSmet Pioneers’ rowdy field (we cannot imagine what the “Two-Man Quartet” has cooked up for a Halloween game) in Round 2, with the winner of that scrum set to take on the victor of a semifinal between (gulp) powerful Lafayette of Wildwood and the SLUH Junior Billikens, led by a trimmed-down and terrific QB in Kyren Eleby. The Geek thinks it’s the toughest district in all of MSHSAA.
As for a Seckman-Northwest forecast, we’ll save that for Week 11’s Friday Night Predictions. In fact, the way we’ve got it for now, you might think the Windsor Owls are invited.
CLASS 6, DISTRICT 1 PREDICTIONS:
DISTRICT CHAMPION: JACKSON INDIANS
RUNNER-UP: (WHO?)