Jefferson 28, St. Pius 15
The box score of Friday’s Highway 61 rematch would seem to show that Week 11’s grudge turned into a dud, at least compared to the electrifying tilt between Jefferson and St. Pius X at Hill Valley earlier this year. Jefferson R-7 took a sizable early lead and coasted into the 4th quarter on the tails of QB Kole Williams and WR Nate Breeze’s magic, just as the ‘Jays did against so many weaker opponents in 2023. But the talented St. Pius Lancers made a serious scrum of it in the 2nd half again, and in doing so, showed how the I-55 Conference could be led by a big, mean machine in Gold & Blue in less than 10 months’ time. Not unlike Grandview in the second half against St. Vincent this season, coach Frank Ray’s visitors halted a rockin’ and rollin’ snowball of a JHS offense vs steep odds in the last 24:00.
Sure, it was the St. Pius X senior class – all 3 players’ worth of it – that kept the ’23 Lancers hot throughout a terrific final stretch and a never-say-die Week 11 effort. Patrick Flanigan emerged as an A-list playmaker against larger schools like Perryville, while QB James Smith was so rock solid in so many roles that Ray spent the final few moments of a postgame Regional Radio interview telling NCAA scouts to add “stars” next to Smith’s name. Nevertheless, it’s the fact that St. Pius has come far with many freshmen on the field that’s so promising.
Maybe the SPX youngsters don’t show up next to “Breeze” and “Flanigan” in the headlines. But they’re making an impact already, even so far as to make Jefferson’s stats look pale compared to the Blue Jays’ primo performances against older and sharper defenses this fall. JHS was held to less than 4 yards-per-carry by a St. Pius X defense fielding almost 10 underclassman starters at Blue Jay Way. Breeze bagged an interception against Smith, but the Jefferson pass rush appears to have been contained, and merely “11” gang tackles (taken from the total tally of “assisted” tackles) shows JHS was on pins and needles as SPX scored and threatened again in the late-going.
For the Jefferson Blue Jays, it’s now a moot point how poorly R-6 played in Week 8, or how good rival St. Pius is bound to be by Week 4 of next season. That’s the best thing about Jefferson’s encore win over SPX – Matt Atley’s club has conquered the local ranks and can look to the St. Louis field for its next guest, a more “exotic” playoff opponent in the mysterious Lift For Life Hawks. On a grander level, the clarity of a championship game’s setting will allow Jefferson’s senior class to put a let-down October behind them, and think in terms of surpassing history.
Jefferson’s never played in a District showdown that was close in the 4th quarter. All of the Blue Jays’ heart-stopping finishes have come early in the bracket. Back in 2020, when JHS reached the Class 2 District Finals and won a championship game over New Madrid, Colby Ott’s fabulous line-up ended the Eagles with a big 3rd quarter.
We have a feeling that trend’s about to be broken. Lift For Life squeaked out a 26-21 victory over the Hermann Bearcats on Saturday afternoon, and it was exactly, EXACTLY the kind of exhausting bout that The Geek hoped Jefferson High’s next playoff foe would have to endure this weekend, before braving 2 county lines and crossing Plattin Creek on a dark bus ride to R-7 in Week 2. Lift For Life played the Hermann contest on a borrowed field, foregoing all media and radio requests in much the same style as Cardinal Ritter this year. (Gee, could that be coincidence, or not?) But we know that Week 11’s “Dark Match” was hard fought, even though Hermann’s long Cinderella journey and injury woes appeared to bring the Bearcats back down to Class 2 quality by Week 9.
“Promising” isn’t the word for Week 12’s championship matchup in Greater Festus. What happened the last time the Jefferson Blue Jays went against a fast-rising, yet vulnerable team in a Class 2 District Championship Game? Colby Ott had ’em down 2 touchdowns before you could say “Howe Crossing.” Alex Rouggly was as confident as The Geek ever saw a Jefferson R-7 skipper prior to that kickoff, but the enigma of Lift For Life’s season (which took a weird and controversial turn in Farmington) kind of boxes Coach Matt Atley into a more humble vibe in 2023’s Week 12. At the same time, L4L can’t be Cloud-9 cocky after almost losing its its first solid District opponent, and on a neutral field.
Crystal City 40, Harrisburg 30
Crystal City football has become a bona-fide miracle. The smallest of the small 11-Man football brands of MSHSAA, a program whose field flooded a total of 3 times before literally TRYING TO FLOAT AWAY later on, a team that endured a season of 14 healthy student-athletes less than 5 years ago, is a District playoff winner, a “Sweet Sixteen” berth in Week 12 of the MSHSAA postseason, and about to welcome pigskin followers from across the Show-Me State at the spectacular, yet often-overlooked Sunken Place in 5 days. Time to rise, CCHS. You’ve done something special.
Forget that it won’t be a “championship game.” MSHSAA offset 2023’s Class 1 playoff bracket so that the Final Four will be determined in the 4 remaining District games played 12 days from press time. Whichever team wins the Tipton at Crystal City scrum will be vying for a Show-Me Bowl bid, just like the victor of Seckman vs Jackson, and Hillsboro vs Festus, in the Elite Eight if you will. Crystal City won’t be able to remember any buzz like the hype that’s about to imbue the Tri-City community in the next week’s time. There’s never been any, because Missouri’s modern District Tournament format began 10 years ago, and Crystal City’s amazing lineup has now advanced into Week 12, an astronomical feat compared to so, so many seasons of losing the Week 10 matchup of any bracket. People will compare Friday’s winners to CCHS playoff teams of the 1990s, and 2000s. Nevermind. This is totally unique! Mississippi Magazine, to borrow a college football term, is blogging the Hornets on Championship Weekend.
Missouri’s tiniest pigskin effort (in size, not in effort) has a resume to stack up to Cinderella’s finest fairy-tale contenders of the 2020s. Crystal has defeated 18 of its last 25 opponents on a schedule of 90% lively teams, ALL hailing from bigger schools than the Hornets (duh!) and some from campuses 4, 6, and even 8x the size of theirs. Bradley’s Farm is an un-flippin’-real 4-0 against Class 4 and 3-1 against Class 3 since 2021. Since falling to a Portageville roster that nobody knew was a fledgling powerhouse back in ’21, the CCHS Hornets have only relinquished leads against 3 opponents, and haven’t lost by more than a lonely TD in 2 years. B-R-A-V-O!
The Geek was dead wrong about Coach Dan Fox and the Crystal City Hornets’ offense in these playoffs. But it would be vain and dishonest to imply Mississippi Magazine even had its premises correct, when it came to either CCHS or Harrisburg on Friday night. We truly had no idea what was going on with the 2 teams, in spite of our lucky “36-26” prediction. Fox is a tricky coach sometimes. Against all conventional reason, he’s gotten REAL tricky this year.
Bradley’s Farm cast aside its Flexbone (read: “Navy”) offense in Week 11 and went into a setup that The Geek only knows how to describe as the “Veer.” The Veer involves 2 dangerous “Split” running backs side-by-side behind a quarterback whose duty is VERY different and a WHOLE lot easier to get the knack of than the other formation.
Cale Schaumburg, the sophomore QB whose start against Herky caused The Geek to flap his arms around like Peyton Manning after an INT, is really, really, really good in that “Split Back” offense. Nolan Eisenbeis, who played an old-fashioned fullback’s role alongside Caden Raftery in the Hornets’ new streamlined attack, is also really, really, REALLY good at running with hand-offs between the tackles for CCHS…and he seems to just love doing it.
Long-time readers know what’s coming next – in the words of Colin Montgomerie, WELL, THAT CHANGES ALL THAT, THEN. If Coach Fox has himself a speedy sophomore QB who can pass (if not lateral) as well as #12 can, especially a player with the broad shoulders and long, solid strides of Cyle “Battlestar” Schaumburg’s not-so-little brother, then whipping out the Split-Back Veer is a stupendous idea. The defense’s problems in trying to defend Eisenbeis’ nimble feet and Caden Raffery’s brahma-bull rushes at the same time make life easy for a newcomer at QB, much like the Delaware Wing-T offense that Festus R-6 set records with in the 2010s, because the 1-2 punch up the middle opens Kanden Bolton’s lanes to the outside. Crystal’s “regular” offense relies on a QB’s improvisation to get the football to playmakers like Bolton sprinting to the edge. But with Raftery, Eisenbeis, and Schaumburg lined up in-package and threatening a defense every which way between the hashes, Kanden Bolton becomes Crystal City’s “X” or “Slash” wild-card all by himself, racing with the egg on “Jet” handoffs that a D cannot prevent by “covering the pitch man.” Bolton’s long sprint for an early TD had the vibe of 2022’s touchdowns. Mixed with an older defense, that’s scary.
Even if the Tipton Cardinals find a way to make Schaumburg keep the ball, they could still be in trouble this Friday. Schaumburg’s not just more comfortable running the Double-Option plays of the split-back attack, but he’s shrugged off the Herky shut-out to lead a far more confident unit that isn’t fumbling or attracting the ref’s attention in the District tournament. Coach Fox comes across like a soft-spoken, meat-and-potatoes CEO who would never watch a Friday scoreboard or take one opponent more seriously than another, but his remark to Regional Radio about predicting Tipton’s win over Louisiana before the Q-Final score came across the wires gives away that Fox did hatch a very sophisticated, risky plan for CCHS football going into the 2023 playoffs. The offense at Herculaneum in Week 9, featuring QB Schaumburg in an offense that QB Nolan Eisenbeis is 10x better at right now, was merely but a ruse. Schaumburg crushed a Harrisburg linebacker on a Red Zone run that lifted the Sunken Place fans into a frenzy, foreshadowing a 4th-quarter drive in which the sophomore looked like Aaron Fish (or whoever Webb City’s quarterback is) while spinning around right tackle and thundering for 30 more yards up the far sideline.
Fox had Mississippi Magazine fooled, lock, stock, and barrel. But more importantly, he might’ve fooled some opposing Class 1 coaches, too. The HC has found a comfort zone for his offense that ALSO involves a new look that District rivals haven’t seen, like a Scotty Bowman hockey team practicing a Power-Play in secret for 6 months and then debuting it vs Chicago in the Eastern Conference Finals. It’s a hell of a move…but it led to a nervy Quarter 2.
Harrisburg, which showed up with just 15 or 16 kids in helmets, turned out to have the size and stamina to withstand Crystal City’s extra blockers and tacklers for 2 hours. Trace Combs is a dynamite QB who burned the Hornets on multiple TD passes. But the Magazine was wrong to describe the Bulldogs as a high-scoring team with a bad defense. It’s the same Iron Man players on offense and defense anyway. HHS’s head coach is “tricky” too.
The first line of Thursday’s preview should’ve been THROW AWAY THE SCORES. Harrisburg’s daring team brought a dose of Arkansas ball to Bradley’s Farm on Friday, using Pulaski Academy’s tactic of on-side kicking at each and every opportunity. The Bulldogs’ on-side kicks were not like Crystal City’s “safety first” squib kicks to the 45-yard line against a weak offense, but rather VERY aggressive and well-planned for use every time Harrisburg scored points. Bulldog coaches even called for another on-side kick attempt from Harrisburg’s own 25-yard line, raising the funny question of whether HHS would on-side kick after its opponents scored on a safety. It helps to explain why #7 seed Harrisburg scored 44 points against the Show-Me Bowl contender Milan Wildcats, and just 32 against 3-7 Scotland County in Week 9. The on-side kick strategy turns football games into basketball games, half-court contests so to speak. If the Bulldogs recover the ball, they’re knocking on the door. When CCHS recovered Harrisburg’s kickoffs, touchdowns weren’t far away. It’s a sharp double-edged sword of a tactic, and it leads to crazy outcomes. Dame Fortune blessed the brash Bulldogs’ strategy until late in the 1st half, when the #2 seed punished a cocky move.
Harrisburg scored to make CCHS’s lead 14-8 after grabbing a muffed punt, and after recovering on-sides, tried to open right up and grab a surprise lead of its own at the half. Incomplete passes stopped the clock, and the Bulldogs’ field position would only get worse this time, as the gamble appeared to backfire right up until Schaumburg threw an interception in the end zone on Crystal City’s ensuing turn. The INT had come about because Fox’s inexperienced quarterback took too long in the huddle prior to the play, causing the Hornets to race to the line and then commit a turnover. Had Fox’s own gamble at the QB spot blown up in his face too? Not quite so, as the fast snap had gotten Harrisburg out-of-rhythm also, and the Bulldogs committed a late-hit foul on Schaumburg in the pocket. Soon, the Harrisburg boys got on the wrong side of the referees altogether, news that was as bad as Crystal City’s critical touchdown and 14-point lead at break. Crystal’s offense would only get better, while flags hurt HHS repeatedly. Harrisburg’s chippy mood led to tensions that spilled over when Seth Senter and a counterpart were ejected.
Crystal City now has itself a genuine QB Dilemma, but it’s a very good “dilemma” to have, one that makes life more difficult for teams visiting the Sunken Place. The Varsity High School Hornets have 2 reliable quarterbacks who can run 2 separate versions of a dynamic attack, and Schaumburg received enough practice in the “Navy” style versus Herculaneum in Week 9’s devious “Jamboree” setup that the new QB can still execute a good old Rocket Toss to Bolton when the situation calls for it. Tipton’s big, imposing defense is about to spend extra time in the film room.
Meanwhile, the CCHS defense – even with Senter and the injured Camden Mayes both potentially scratched for Week 12 – has become the linchpin that The Geek thought it would be by November. It’ll be the defense that gives Crystal any chance it has to advance again and face St. Vincent or Van-Far High for a District Championship on 11/17. But on broader terms, the Hornets’ lethal young LB corps led by Eisenbeis, Schaumburg, and Ricardo Pastrana, the latter of whom looked all-grown-up while having a sophomore’s first big party on defense against Harrisburg, shows how any greenhorn’s struggles against Tipton – if the Hornets are bound to have them – would only serve to underscore what solid shape the Bradley’s Farm program is in, and actually looks to be in for a number of seasons to come.
There’s a trade-off in Crystal City’s status as an underdog on the state level. If CCHS could just borrow 12 additional seniors from another team, and perhaps a polished, senior offensive line such as Hillsboro’s or Seckman’s for a few weeks, the Hornets would be favored to win the Class 1 Show-Me Bowl. There’s no doubt about it. But there’s also a catch. Crystal City’s exciting 2023 campaign, if its 12+ underclassmen were All-Star seniors, would represent the END OF FOOTBALL AT CCHS. Having a youthful supporting cast to go with this season’s senior track stars is a handicap to Crystal City’s chance to go to state right away, but it’s also a sign that the streak of winning records does not have to pause in 2024, when the Hornets could be faced with another roster-size crisis, and have to practice with only 20 players. With 3 out of 5 starting offensive linemen poised to return to a unit that will mature ten-fold by next summer, Mississippi Magazine expects that a ’24 backfield made up of the names listed above will gallop for so many yards that all of Crystal’s graduations on the defensive line (and at wide receiver) won’t knock Bradley’s Farm off of the winning path, especially with that magnificent set of linebackers going into their prime years with a vengeance.
How sweet it is to reach a MSHSAA “Sweet Sixteen.” But if the Crystal City Hornets happen to win again, and move to 2-0 in a loaded District bracket, Missouri’s “tiny” pigskin brand won’t be known as anything but elite.
Seckman 33, Oakville 0
Seckman’s scrums get passed over as afterthoughts too often on Mississippi Magazine, and more’s the pity. One reason is that Seckman High has gotten so good at football as to make most of its opponents obsolete. The Suburban League schedule shoe-horns our northern Large Schools into so many academic bouts to begin with, and it’s easy to simply wait around for the next evenly-matched Jaguars kickoff (sometimes you gotta wait a while!), like the vibe of walking Rock Creek and waiting for the next fishing spot to come up. (The Geek assumes that Rock Creek isn’t protected by force-fields next to Seckman’s sports complex the way that it is at Windsor High School’s.)
It’s unfair to look ahead to Seckman vs Jackson without looking back at “10-0,” a record that TGG mistakenly (but accurately) granted ahead-of-time to the Jags in last Thursday’s error-filled preview. Tommy Gibbar’s supporting cast certainly stands in better shape after white-washing Oakville 33-0, as opposed to the nail-biting midgame of 2023’s previous Jaguars-Tigers game. We especially love that Seckman’s defense – according to STLToday’s eye-popping stat sheet – sacked Oakville’s quarterbacks a total of 12 times. The Jaguars’ dynamite pass rush, among other understated factors, is why SHS may be a more dangerous playoff team now than in Cole Ruble’s final year.
But if the Seckman Jaguars, the local media, and every football fan in Imperial have been looking forward to seeing Jackson all year, it’s not for the most obvious reasons. It’s a mistake if you hear anyone on the radio say, “Ahh, and Seckman gets its shot at Jackson, the shot that Imperial’s been waiting on for years!” Seckman’s athletes have found themselves waiting on Jackson, or somebody, to give them a real battle for 4 quarters this season (0-for-10 so far), however it was the 2022 squad that returned a samey-same starting lineup after losing to Jackson 49-14, and the Jaguars spent all of that training camp scrawling “Jackson” on the weight-room walls. After getting jilted out of any realistic opportunity to go to state, let alone beat the Indians, thanks to MSHSAA jerking the campus up another enrollment class last summer while Jackson stayed put it’s only this year that Missouri’s Class 6 bracket – and somewhat unexpectedly once again – has paired both powerhouses as #1 and #2 seeds in the top tier.
Let’s put it this way – if head coach Nick Baer made like Rip Van Winkle and fell asleep by a tree before COVID-19 struck (lucky break!) then woke up to see this Friday’s pair of opponents taking the field, he would say, “Oh, good, it’s 2022, and we are facing Jackson for a Class 5 title just like everybody thought. Hey, wait…where’s Cole?!”
Cole will be tuning in this Friday, coach. There’s no prohibition against NCAA athletes watching their alma mater on Friday night…though we’ve got a sneaking hunch Mr. Ruble will see a much closer skirmish than the JHS visit he remembers. Nobody can remember a team like those ‘Injuns coming to meet a 10-0 county squad for a championship game because it hasn’t happened, just like Crystal City football has practically never loomed over an enormous bracket as a #2 seed before. The Geek expected a season of landmarks – and Landmark A-#1 is the Valley.
Park Hills Central 44, Herculaneum 14
We might as well say the quiet part out loud. Herky’s points scored and 30-point margin of defeat against the potential state champions of Class 3 will be viewed with an “asterisk” by coaches and analysts, since Park Hills Central grabbed a 22-point lead right away, and was substituting players as early as the 2nd quarter. Even a coach interviewed on Regional Radio said, “That Park Hills Central team is well known for the sandbaggin’!”
But hold on a second; Mississippi Magazine wasn’t looking for a W from Herculaneum on Friday. Just any additional scrap of evidence that Dunklin’s got a real Thoroughbred in the infant stages this time around. When comparing the Blackcats’ performance against Park Hills’ third string with Central’s many, many other rivals who get pushed into Turbo Clock time, we can see that Herky played quality football on a bright stage in Week 11’s pair of mop-up frames. Central didn’t allow its Turbo Clock victims Potosi or Fredericktown to do anything special in trash-time this season. Rebels’ backups scored all kinds of points against Caruthersville’s defense. Last year, Park Hills Central wouldn’t allow St. Genevieve any consolation TDs despite taking a 28-point lead into halftime vs the Dragons…twice! Herculaneum, it’s safe to say, outpaced all those schools’ performances against CHS’s scout-team lineup.
The best thing is that Blane Boss was gracious and kind in his postgame remarks, doing what we’d all hoped he would do in putting Herky’s late-season charge into perspective. None of Coach Boss’ cheerful celebrations of his 2023 seniors change the fact that the group was small in number, and that the Blackcats are raising a youthful corps of talent that could put the smokestack on a plateau with the Rebels and Class 3’s other powers. It will take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears…but the ‘Cats have gotten used to that during a season of raw guts and perseverance.
Hillsboro 48, North County 0
Speaking of trash time, TGG completely whiffed on how the latter half of a likely blow-out would progress at Leon Hall. There were no traded TDs in the late going, and Coach Sucharski doesn’t seem to have been interested in playing Musical Positions with Hillsboro’s bench, as all of the Hawks’ skill players who got in the contest tended to receive a healthy number of touches. QB Preston Brown had what may have been his most dazzling night ever for Hillsboro in the passing game, but what really stands out from the HHS box score is WR Chase Sucharski’s mega-dominant game for the Blue & White, averaging nearly 30 yards each on his 5 receptions. It’s almost like the wide receiver read The Geek’s 2023 All-Star selections and felt that Mississippi Magazine should have “Knuckle-d” a certain Hillsboro kid into a WR slot, then went out and proved it, making Brown look even deadlier in Week 11.
The offense looks grand, but the defense might feel even better. Hillsboro’s surprise shut-out of North County’s top string in the semifinal’s 3rd quarter shows that Leon Hall’s 2023 defense can make up for its lack of an elite pass rush with speedy roster depth, and a consistency in pass-coverage that HHS has simply never enjoyed until now. That’s excellent news going into a showdown with Festus, which is going to try to fast-break its way to an upset title on Friday. Combined with Hillsboro’s finesse compared to past generations, it could well be a long, draining bout.
Festus 51, Sikeston 7
It’s also not hard to imagine padawans from the Festus offense clicking Mississippi Magazine last week, reading the word “sluggish,” popping off in anger, and deciding to do something about it. (If so, then at least they didn’t read “Worse than Orchard Farm,” which would have forced The Geek to flee the neighborhood.) In Friday night’s semifinal, the boys let Sikeston hang around at 0-7 with some nifty playground-ball for about 7 minutes of game clock, then exploded for 37 points in just over a full quarter of play, making the FHS Marching Band play in front of a scoreboard that read “44-0” at halftime…almost like a Cardinal Ritter game except that people were allowed to see it.
Hillsboro is pretty loaded again, and the Tigers won’t even get one of Jefferson’s “exotic” playoff opponents unless they’re fortunate enough to defeat HHS, then maul a Meramec Valley rival in Week 13’s Q-Finals. But if you have to go up against Godzilla, you’d be hard pressed to find a Black & Gold with any more or superior weapons to attack this fall’s Hillsboro Hawks and the other ranked bids of Class 4. Hayden Bates’ return gives the Varsity Football Tigers an astounding backfield of Bates, Yates, Edwards, Williams, Cunningham, and (also now-healthy) rotation-QB Essien Smith. Offensive linemen are winning battles. The passing TDs that Coach O so often relies on are gravy in ’23.
Meanwhile, this trick of saying something and then having local football players read it, get mad, and make sure that it goes down as 100% wrong when the scrum is over could turn out to be useful. Whichever Festus or Hillsboro athletes are reading this column today, please take note that our prediction for Week 12’s Hawks vs Tigers clash is that it will be THE WORST GAME EVER. Understand? The WORST GAME EVER. WE PREDICT that FHS and Hillsboro are going to stink up the joint, and the championship match’s final score will be 8-4, with the winning team scoring 4 safeties. Preston Brown’s going to throw balls that go backwards, like the Last-Picked Ball from “Stories From Sideways School,” and Jeremiah Cunningham will punt toward his own end zone – on FIRST DOWN!
Yes, it will NOT be a can’t-miss, high-octane thrill ride when Hillsboro hosts Festus for all the marbles. It’s going to NOT be a classic, and we definitely do NOT think the 2 rosters could combine to wallop Cardinal Ritter’s butt, or anything like that. (Oh, and don’t read the next line down. The article’s almost done anyway. It’s not important.)
There you have it, folks – we just guaranteed there WILL be a great Class 4 District 1 Championship Game on Friday night. If Week 11 was any indication, our student-athletes won’t let some old snotty reporter have the last word.