Whoever said Crystal City football was going to stink in 2024 has some SERIOUS explaining to do. QB Nolan Eisenbeis has led the Sunken Place boys in one of the top Varsity games – and best playoff victories – that any of us have ever seen. Crystal City’s administrators will never, EVER doubt their football team’s staying power after this weekend. We’ve got a new small-school dynamo on our hands, and it just stung another contender.
On a pure sports level, David Parham’s tackle of Charleston’s very own “Refrigerator Perry,” the 285 lb. lineman-turned-rusher Deshaun Henderson, made for a breathtaking finish on the Crystal City 1-yard-line in overtime. Each team’s quarterback had made an unlikely play to save his school’s skin on the Hornets and Blue Jays’ alternating TD drives from the 25. (That’s a drive from the OPPOSING 25 and a “Red Zone” turn for both teams until a round is won on the scoreboard, in case anyone’s not familiar with High School and NCAA overtimes.) Parham hasn’t been predominantly praised compared to his kid brother Alex from the 8th Grade program, but his winning defensive play showed the junior D-lineman in such stout condition that he was still breaking blocks in OT, performing against the biggest and strongest foe in a Crystal City playoff bracket since the Hornets were in Class 2 a couple of decades ago. It’s a mark of CCHS’s newfound depth and stamina.
On a symbolic level? Oh GOSH. Move over, “Holdinghausen” and “Eisenbeis,” now you’ve got company in the Royal Family of Crystal City pigskin. David just conquered a Goliath of an offensive line to make one of the most important stops in Bradley’s Farm history, and what’s even better is what the Hornets’ 2-point conversion stop had to remind CCHS and its cheering fans of at the final whistle. No, not the St. Louis Rams’ tackle on the 1-yard-line from the Super Bowl (well, that too). Crystal City’s memory of losing to Louisiana on the goal line in 2022’s quarterfinals is fresher and a lot more raw. As a freshman that season, Parham stood on the sideline and watched as the Varsity Hornets put a last-ditch comeback drive together, only to fall short when the Bulldogs stopped Caden Raftery on Louisiana’s 1-yard-line on the final play. After the semifinal’s goal-line stands vs Charleston, we can rest easy that NO such spoiler will out-muscle them with elimination on the line again.
Nolan Eisenbeis is not a real teenager. He’s a proverbial myth that came true, a comet soaring over that huge Harvest Moon behind the Sunken Place’s scoreboard. #12 has gotten so great from behind center for Crystal City that it makes a weird case to report on with 3 months of hindsight. No one was prepared to call Eisenbeis an “underachiever” early this season. Nolan’s occasional mishap was frankly the least of the Hornets’ issues during the Slump of 2024. We thought that #12 had found his waterline as a QB who would have an occasional awesome game, and be pretty good otherwise. Given the senior signal-caller’s emergence as a weekly difference-maker since Halloween, now you’ve got to look back and say that not only was Eisenbeis “underachieving,” his whole offense was. Gridiron Geek, of course, means that in the BEST possible way, because #12’s unfathomable fall of ’24 shows that CCHS has only scratched the surface of its new tradition of WINNING.
Crystal’s quarterback was pretty good in August. 5 weeks later, he was starting to get warmed up. In Friday’s semifinal he was MOLTEN LAVA HOT, a dynamic TD generator that Charleston couldn’t catch, deceive, or force to fumble in crunch-time. Crystal City’s coaches did what The Geek had hoped they would do, calling unpredictable wide-open plays and outside pitches with Nolan’s backfield operating in a Shotgun-snap. Eisenbeis was given the freedom to waggle and scramble and fling passes up the sideline, outside of the dangerous rush-lanes of Charleston’s 2000 pounds of defensive linemen. Trailing by a TD in the 1st quarter, Eisenbeis and Evan Wolfe connected for a 90-yard home run that was just what the doctor ordered, and the Blue Jays defense began to back up a bit. Crystal’s ground game was FANTASTIC against Charleston given the size-and-age disparity between the teams in the trenches, but Wolfe’s big catch scared CHS into letting the Hornets run.
It was in OT when Eisenbeis put the game, the season, and the town of Crystal City on his back. When a ticky-tack penalty flag moved CCHS back to the 40-yard line, the dual-threat upperclassman took off on an easy scramble around right end for 5 or 6 yards. Eisenbeis feinted doing the same thing on the following play, then – WHOOP – shot through Charleston’s tacklers like Woody Wabbit. The gunslinger stormed into the Blue Jays secondary with only one thing on his mind, and that was to get to the pylons and score 6 points. Eisenbeis’ thrilling cut for the home-team corner of Charleston’s end zone wound up a yard short of its goal. But a first-try rush TD for Rico Pastrana on the next snap showed that the goal-line woes of 2022-23 are long gone. That’s when Eisenbeis crafted a final gem to get CCHS over the 35-point mark and into the District title contest, directing traffic on the run until London Patton got wide open for the winning catch.
The semifinal’s other heroes are too numerous to mention, but we’ll try. Riley Hendrickson piloted the whole brave effort as a 180-pound replacement center against Charleston’s massive bigs. Pastrana was so bullish running against a Division 2-sized defensive front that there’s no question a new “Raftery” has arrived at Sunken Place as of 2024-25. Patton led the defensive backfield in his best scrum ever as a Hornet, and Parham and Hendrickson each landed a sack while pass-rushing against 300 lb. offensive tackles. Landyn DeRousse was fire on a cold night, putting up 100+ yards and galloping for 2 long touchdown carries on just 11 touches. 2024’s new Mississippi Avenue coach Adam Sims chose a clumsy style of inputting plays that cost the Hornets flags (and fumbles), but boy, does the first-year skipper have his playbook working like crazy.
The way the Hornets desperately threw themselves at Henderson on the final play spoke volumes. Whatever the scars, Crystal’s special rise in Friday Night Lights is worth it. It’s real, it’s happening, and it didn’t wait for 2025. Don’t be upset, Festus Tigers…that Class 1 neighbor that’s stealing your headline space is only Jefferson County’s sensation, rockin’ it in yet another championship rumble.