Seckman 26, Ritenour 0
The Seckman Jaguars were easier to get a handle on it Week 8. No longer were our site’s scouts ruffling through Seckman’s 900 football players listed on HUDL, while attempting to figure out who-did-what on weeks with no postgame shows, no quick stats, and MSHSAA TV streams with no scoreboard and no audible announcer, and fuzzy numbers celebrating TDs in complete darkness and flashing lights. It gave rise to still more goof-ups like calling Matt Muessig “Nick Muessig” the other day, when The Geek conflated two of SHS’s 72 players who were listed as #90-through-#98 in the recent past. But the Live Stream STL broadcast of Seckman vs Ritenour was crystal clear, a beautiful image of Friday’s seminal performance by the Jaguars in The Valley. Gosh – does it ever seem easier to get a handle on the Jags now! Unless you’re the Ritenour Huskies … who let Seckman slip away all night.
Seckman delivered one of Jeff County’s top victories of the year on Friday, with perhaps a more powerful display than victorious St. Pius put on against Vianney. Ritenour wasn’t just a 5-2 overall conference rival, but one which was coming in hot! The Huskies had won four games in a row prior to visiting The Valley, knocking Pattonville from the ranks of the unbeaten before beating Parkway North last week. Wow, the Jaguars just took one the hottest team in the Suburban League … and won in a glorious shutout.
How did it happen? Seckman’s offense purred right along, while Imperial’s pass rush made life a chore for Ritenour’s star helmsman Anthony Odom. The winning TD was a rather quiet one, occurring unbeknownst to the crowd when Jaxson Jablonski scored his 66th point running with the ball this year with 3:26 left in the first quarter. Jablonski scored as a more traditional runner, not a Wildcat, later in the first half – only to set up Nick Weidler’s coup-de-grace on an end-around to make it 20-0 in Quarter 3.
Meanwhile, the Jaguars’ defense was simply lights out. Mysterious Mr. Matt Muessig returned to action, or at least that’s the pass rusher that Mississippi Magazine knows who wears #92 and can drive a quarterback like Odom crazy for 48:00, having notched five sacks already in a stint of healthy games earlier in the season. Muessig and #95 Chase Gaugh were all over Odom’s rhythm and timing, “forcing his decisions” in the words of a scout watching along. It was a statement effort by a front that’s getting healthy.
What can you even say about Dirty Dozen football anymore?! Seckman, Hillsboro, and Grandview are just three of the schools that suffered massive injury problems in midseason. But instead of things turning into a sob story, the stretch run is turning into a story of returning players all over the place, and not only that, they’re playing on better teams than ever! Seckman High’s signature victory announces the Jaguars’ presence as a stout, dynamic, and hungry title hopeful … and they might just lift a trophy on October 23.
Farmington 55, Hillsboro 9
What surprised The Geek about the first half of Hillsboro-Farmington wasn’t that the 7-1 Black Knights ran out to a lead, but that it was Hillsboro’s offense that looked worse than its defense in the critical hour before halftime. Hillsboro’s 62-33 win over Holt, and even the Hawks’ flag-filled 0-20 loss to Festus R-6, seemed to show that the Blue & White could still find alternate ways to compete when an opposing QB can’t be stopped from moving the chains. Leon Hall has been getting healthy, bringing a full array of quick weapons back to the fold in the backfield and on the boundary, but the Hawks couldn’t drive the ball versus a Farmington team against which St. Pius of Class 3 rushed for over 300 yards last Friday. The Black Knights’ defensive TD made up for the Farmington kids giving up 7 points – a rare scenario in 2026! FHS – the other one – looks bound for the state playoffs.
Festus 41, Poplar Bluff 6
The Festus Tigers could be returning to the state playoffs soon, too. The rival Hillsboro Hawks have lost momentum in Weeks 5-8, needing to gobble a four-bagger of turnovers to turn a tight tilt with DeSoto into a traditional Hawks-over-Dragons romp, while falling to Festus and Farmington by nine combined TDs over the last 21 days. It’s starting to look like Sikeston will make a run at 10/13’s District Championship Game, though. Sikeston’s 6-2 mark begins to look underrated in hindsight, since some of the Bulldogs’ close-call competition from earlier this season has proven to be outstanding, the way that St. Mary’s has helped Festus state ranking out by having a great year following Week 2’s close game against FHS. That being the case, the Tigers – should they be fortunate enough to seed first in C4D1 – must prepare for either of two potential Week 12 rivals, each offering a different challenge.
Festus didn’t look good enough in Week 8 to be touted as a lock over Hillsboro or Sikeston, or North County for that matter, in the playoff bracket. QB Quinnten O’Brien and DB Max Foglesong made outstanding plays, and Tiger Nation is very glad for two of its electrifying Class of 2027 … but O’Brien’s 38-yard scamper for the opening points and Foglesong’s midgame interception were examples of seniors “bailing out” an incomplete team effort, to make the final scoreboard look better. The Varsity Tigers’ vaunted offensive line whiffed on blocks and left the runners to fend for themselves, like Barry Sanders on the 1992 Detroit Lions, on a significant number of snaps, even while Midmeadow Lane built a 21-point halftime edge on the first leg of its “road trip.”
Next weekend brings a more challenging road opponent in the Kirksville Tigers. But you know what? It seems like tough opponents are what bring out the best in Black & Gold this season! Meanwhile, that #1 seed is a distinct possibility if the Tigers grab the win.
St. Pius 30, Vianney 27
It’s the moment we have been waiting for. St. Pius X has earned its watershed victory over a MSHSAA Large School.
Mississippi Magazine couldn’t make up its mind whether Vianney was playing a “super hard” or just a pretty-hard slate of rivals this year. The Metro Catholic League is rich and deep in athletic lineups again, but its winner might’nt vie for a trophy beyond the district level. Week 8’s scores confirmed that The Geek’s first thought was correct, and that CBC and DeSmet may have to set their sights on districts over state. Both powerhouses defeated VHS (now streaming digitally!) in lively offensive clashes this season, showing that the Griffins still face one of the tougher Class 4 slates that doesn’t belong to Hannibal or Kearney. Vianney, with no small irony, may have thought that scheduling a Class 3 opponent – the size of a Class 2 program, even! – could help the Golden Griffins find relief, and a comfortable W, after another fall of punching up against Class 6 dynasties that can win even when they’re down.
There’s just one thing Vianney didn’t consider. What if your Small School opponent turns out to be tougher than some of the Class 6 big-shots?! It’s a problem for many Class 4s and Class 5s in Missouri this year, who are getting shocked Valle-over-Summit style by one of the most exciting C2-C3 fields that the state has ever produced. The rise of Small Schools pigskin in Missouri is exemplified by the 2026 St. Pius Lancers, who manufactured their own stunning triumph in the nearby neighborhood of Sunset Hills on Friday.
It was a tale of two halves for Hill Valley. The opening frame at St. John Vianney seemed to have “Caruthersville Week 1” written all over it, at least when Nathan Heredia was made to strike an awkward 15-yard kickoff which was grabbed and returned by the Griffins to the St. Pius X 30-yard line, sparking Vianney to its second TD drive following QB Harlan Futrell’s 50-yard strike to upperclassman Noah Williams early in Quarter 1. This Friday Night Lights blog has spent forever explaining to JeffCo’s teams that since a full-on-mob of an Onside Kick is safer than a weird half-baked one, anyway, you might as well go with the sideways Onside Kick and see if you can recover it, knowing that there’s not going to be a kick return against all 10 of your players on a tight line. Heredia just wasn’t ready to shine yet, but he still wound up trumping Vianney’s senior PK Joey Gamlin in the end.
With the rain beginning to fall in SoCo, the Varsity Lancers appeared to hit the Self-Destruct Button. Hill Valley tried a risky 4th-down gamble at midfield on which Cody Shaver was stuffed for almost no gain, setting Vianney up for the kind of plus-momentum turn that the Golden Griffins are made for. Vianney’s 1000+ yard senior running back Robert Eatherton scored to get the host Griffins soaring.
It’s hard to say if that’s when SPX turned things around, because the rain became heavy enough to warp Vianney’s camera lens from the press box. We know that the Lancers got behind the sticks without trying to throw the bean a whole lot – that led to Evan Eckrich dropping back ice-cold, failing to find a rhythm until he found Harrison Ray on a “drag” route catch-and-run that extricated the Lancers from bad field position late in the second quarter. Though, it was No. 40 who had already saved Hill Valley’s hide with a magnificent 60-yard scamper for a touchdown prior to the halftime break. The Geek’s live notes had it as “21-16” for Vianney at halftime, but HUDL’s scoreboards from Vianney’s highlight reel don’t agree with that. Vianney removed the game’s video from MSHSAA TV after it ended. It was a close game after two frames.
What a difference a halftime makes! The St. Pius X coaching staff and team captains deserve serious praise for bringing a whole new team out on the field in Quarter 3. Eckrich got into a Shotgun setup, the Lancers’ “multiple” offense finally engaged again, and worked the ball upfield on a series of Wishbone-style handoffs until St. Pius was perched at the 50-yard line. Running power-style from the Spread offense can be as effective as passing deep from a tight formation. Nothing, however, is as effective as a Cody Shaver run from scrimmage. Shaver soon took a third long gallop for a TD. St. Pius went on to lead 24-21 after 42:00 of play.
Was it going to be a one-man show for St. Pius X, in victory or defeat? We got our answer when the Griffins drove into Lancers territory for the second-to-last time, hoping to give Gamlin another chance after he pulled a slippery field-goal attempt wide in the second frame. Futrell, a sensational scrambler who could be the very best freshman QB to start for a MSHSAA school this season, moved to his right and hurled another pass downfield. That’s when Brody Ervin – SPX’s Captain Clutch – landed the KO punch, hauling in a 75-yard pick-six that made much of the town of Festus hold its collective breath for seven seconds. Ervin, whose performance in the second half of last Week 12’s district title game was the clutchest around, did it once again at Vianney. “Remember Meeee …” it’s Brody “Blue Boy” Ervin who can unleash the knockout punch when the Lancers need one.
-THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR THE PICK-SIX VIDEO WHEN AVAILABLE-
After that touchdown, Coach Ray’s staff showed that it had gotten past the impatience of Quarter 1’s wild gambles. Vianney was assessed a special-teams penalty with St. Pius leading 30-21, which gave the Lancers an almost risk-free opportunity to try another funky Onside Kick. Instead, Heredia ran up to the football and kicked it into next week. He kicked it to Pluto. Game, set, match.
Not that Futrell didn’t keep it tense for another 3:00. On a fourth down from deep in Griffins territory, the frosh phenom somehow escaped an SPX pass rush that produced at least five sacks on the night, and heaved a pass to Williams that turned into a jump-ball field flipper for Vianney, soon cashed in with another Futrell passing TD and an obvious Onside Kick situation that neither team’s coaches could mistake for anything else, with the gap closed to 30-27. After running three plays and facing a 4th-and-1, the coaching staff made its next sober decision, punting away with confidence that Vianney wouldn’t score in just over 1:00.
There was no way Vianney could mint a breathless comeback against St. Pius X’s ferocious pass rush. The Lancers lived in Futrell’s pocket more and more often as the game went on, Dawson Litterall, and his stellar sophomore teammate Javier Pulido, finishing with two sacks each. St. Pius X’s “Larry Wilson” blitzing safety Lynnden McCoin got one too, and the Lancers’ defense finally appeared to snow a frustrated Futrell under with a Team Sack on the fast, rocket-armed teen’s last gasp in plus-territory.
You know one team with a tough schedule that we’ve overlooked? St. Pius the Tenth. The Lancers haven’t played a lot of really good teams, but the quality of the good teams they have faced has been off the charts … and so far, 2026’s squad is acing that test. The Lancers were booked to lose at Gibson Southern, an Indiana title contender, and shook up the host Titans in the first half. Then, Farmington came to Hill Valley and was shaken by another St. Pius upset threat, made despite the Lancers being down multiple ineligible linemen. Last but not least, St. Pius steeled itself after Friday’s dicey first frame, and took down the Metro Catholic, allowing even less points to Vianney than Christian Brothers College did in CBC’s own conquest of the Griffins in 2026.
When your team faces three straight state-playoff hopefuls, each of them from a far larger campus than yours, and all three games are essentially deadlocked at halftime … you’re doing something right. Especially when you win that third one to go 1-2 against those state championship hopefuls … or at least a Rookie-of-the-Year-championship hope in the arm of Mr. Harlan Lutrell.
Week 9’s kickoff at St. Pius X is going to be spiffy. It’s a potential preview of the Show-Me Bowl in Week 15, except without the pressure that such a contest would often bring about, since we know that Valle and SPX can’t meet up in this postseason. It’s an opportunity to have fun – but for the Lancers, it’s also one more chance to prove their mettle before a fateful playoff run begins.
Northwest 35, Webster Groves 0
Talk about looking forward to the next game! We thought Cardinal Ritter’s “30-22” win over Lift For Life was evidence, but Northwest’s 35 points scored against Webster Groves takes the cake when it comes to a looking-forward type of outcome.
Sure, the Varsity Lions romped in the first half. Northwest got running back Will Murphy kick-started with a TD in the second 12:00, abiding TGG’s advice by letting the backup RBs have at it too. Senior Kaleb Fels, and the freshman prodigy Roman “Money Down” Bommarito, combined for a handful of effective carries. Senior bruiser Elijah Treece had five solo tackles against the Chess Kids.
But it’s still amusing that Northwest came out of halftime so ready to move on to Oakville and the big game on 10/23. NHS didn’t feel like scoring any more TDs, so the Lions scored a safety to achieve the perfect Turbo Clock score of 35-0, and get that clock wound.
Can you imagine what Head Coach Scott Gerling’s halftime speech must have been like!
Gerling: Boys, if you keep swinging the axe, that tree is going to fall.
Cohenn Stark: Oak tree?
Gerling: No, no, not Oak-anything. We’re up against Webster Groves. Come on, you guys all know, the Village of Webster Groves.
Carter Stark: “Village.” That sounds about right. But I think we were talking about a Ville.
Gerling: WEBSTER GROVES! OUR OPPONENT IS WEBSTER GROVES! NOT OAKVILLE! GOT IT? UNTIL NEXT WEEK, I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER SINGLE WORD ABOUT OAKVILLE!!!
Jeremiah Clines: Sorry, coach, I was watching MSHSAA TV and not paying attention. Did you just say “Oakville?”
St. Vincent 49, Grandview Eagles 18
WOAH. Woah woah woah! The Grandview Eagles lost on Friday as expected … but it looks like they might just be back.
The Geek would never have asked for Grandview vs St. Vincent to be “called off” if he knew what the Birds of Prey had in store for Senior Night. Yes, maybe the win-loss outcome was never going to be in doubt, but that didn’t mean that a previously hapless, helpless Eagles lineup couldn’t dress-to-impress and make a statement against St. Vincent, deserving of rich accolades.
Grandview didn’t score 18 mop-up points. GHS scored in the first quarter (!) against 7-1 St. Vincent’s proud senior corps, a 50-yard streak from sophomore Bobby Gregory setting up his own 4th-and-goal scoring plunge moments later. QB Andrew Schumer and the offended Varsity Indians offense took the gridiron and quickly built a 21-6 lead, but the Eagles then embarked on a beautiful ball-control drive that took Grandview to the St. Vinny’s 36-yard line … until something happened that put the football in fine print.
Gregory’s classmate Evan Wofford was gang-tackled by St. Vincent on the next play, and could not get up. Not only did Grandview suffer what appeared to be another serious injury, Wofford was so badly injured that a 15-minute pause was followed by the sound of an ambulance, at which point Grandview cut off their HUDL stream of the contest. We can’t offer a worthwhile recap on the next two quarters of play after GHS threatened another scoring drive, but – way more importantly! – we can state that Wofford was not surrounded by panicked doctors trying to rescue him or whatnot. It felt like Grandview knew just what the injury was before the stretcher arrived. If it was any kind of a life-threatening crisis for the young man, folks on the field might’ve acted differently.
Meanwhile, the Eagles clearly kept fighting, and resisted the Turbo Clock by falling by just 31 points. That’s as much of a shocker as Seckman blowing out Ritenour, in its own way. Grandview’s gritty ball-control against St. Vincent’s potential conference-champion defense reminds us of 2019’s brave battle against Jefferson R-7, one that signaled that the Eagles’ football revival was for real. Dangit, MyMoInfo could have aired this contest instead of Windsor vs Fredericktown. Like they ever miss out on St. Vincent!
In case any Grandview fans need comic relief of the “Bonners Ferry Field” variety, after seeing yet another courageous Class 1 kid go down with a scary injury, here’s the “Michael Jackson Song” that TGG hears in his head when he thinks of St. Vincent’s head coach, Tim Schumer, and of Mississippi Magazine’s awkward-but-funny episodes reporting on St. Vincent pigskin this season:
Andrew Schumer is not my blood line
He’s just a quarterback
Who we think can maaaaake us Number One
The kid is not my son
Malden 28, Crystal City 0
Sorry, it’s getting emotionally hard to watch the 2026 Crystal City Hornets, and we’re not sure anyone would be interested to read a real recap of Friday’s loss anyway. Crystal’s coaches need to unearth videos from the BC era (Before Collins) – not from 2023 but from 2020 and 2021 – to remember how an overmatched team can still have strong fundamentals and play a solid brand of ball.
Fredericktown 20, Windsor 0
Different “recap,” same moral. Who wants to go through the specifics of the Blackcats-Owls outcome, except to say that Windsor has finally (gulp) bottomed out? It may not be an altogether bad thing that the Owls have bottomed out, because heck, at least something different has happened and there’s not going to be another “Groundhog Day” 4-6 record at the end of the season. The inescapable fallout of losing to Small Schools could spark a “Freeman’s Cleanin'” overhaul of an offseason in which the veteran coach makes bigger changes at WHS, like (maybe) giving the underclass teams more of a lateral quickness focus in practice regimens and game plans, so that the Owls’ molasses-speed reactions to plays changing direction can start to improve.
Fox 27, Riverview Gardens 6
Were the Fox Warriors scoreboard watching on Friday? Probably not, since they would have to have been distracted during a boring first quarter, and none of the bad news on from MSHSAA’s scoreboard had revealed itself by then. In the second quarter, Arnold began scoring and didn’t relent until it had a nice three-TD win over Class 4 in the books, RB/LB Ryan Joggerst leading the performance until Jude Pribish scored on two gallops in the last frame. The opposing Rams’ only TD was a mop-up.
But wow, you would trade 100 wins over any Classification to reverse the grim news of Friday’s other scores. St. Mary’s has upset DeSmet, a contender to win the Metro Catholic this season and a state champion from 2024, 37-35. On the same weekend, Cape Central imploded and lost 13-0 to Class 2 Caruthersville, the same “No, Not a Forfeit” final score by which DeSmet happened to knock Fox out of the Final Four in 2020. That puts St. Mary’s in second place in Class 5, District 1, slightly above Arnold, while comfortably ahead of Cape Central in fourth. Fox has a far easier opponent than St. Mary’s in Week 9, and can potentially still manufacture a #2 seed and a bye week. But it’s unlikely that CHS will pass St. Mary’s again, which likely pits Fox against the powerful Dragons in the district semifinals, whether the Warriors can pass up the Dragons in the season’s final week or not.
You just never know how MSHSAA standings are going to work out. We hope against hope that the unpredictability doesn’t strike Fox’s playoff chances down in 2026. At the least, a matchup with St. Mary’s could help Fox show that it’s on par with Highway A.
DeSoto 31, Potosi 13
Cannon Kisner wins the rushers’ duel in Potosi by about the final score that we thought he would, although Carter Pyatt has clearly emerged to become the Trojans’ meanest rushing threat in a while. Maybe Pyatt will keep C3D2 from being academic in November.
Ste. Genevieve 23, Jefferson Blue Jays 7
You have heard of teams “getting behind the sticks.” Against the Ste. Genevieve Dragons on Friday, the Jefferson Blue Jays got behind the game and couldn’t get back out in front of it. Everything went wrong at the outset, the Dragons’ first TD followed by flags on the Blue Jays that backed up Jefferson’s offense at the starting blocks. By the time Sam Kerley got warmed up from the pocket, eventually hitting Brandon Crader on a first-half touchdown toss, Ste. Genevieve was already building itself a comfortable lead.
We’re proud of how Jefferson’s defense overcame a crummy start, holding Ste. Genevieve to “Potosi”-style numbers on offense following those early breakdowns for the Jays. Of course, R-7 was looking forward to the conference title game on October 23, putting this outcome in the “USA 76, Spain 66” category, despite how the Dragons technically ended a JHS winning streak.
Photo Credits: Grandview R-2 Football, St. Pius X Lancers Facebook, Angie Andrews Facebook