The Festus Varsity Football Tigers will play their fifth straight road game in the Class 4 state playoffs this Saturday at Sullivan High. It’s an anxious time for a Black & Gold squad whose older brothers, sisters, and cousins recall what happened the last time Festus traveled down I-44 for a state quarterfinal in 2020. The Union Wildcats frustrated and defeated Cole Rickermann and the Tigers 34-25 to bring an unanticipated early end to Rickermann’s junior season. Sullivan, like Union in 2020, and like the North County Raiders who scared the heck out of FHS last week, loves to run right up the middle.
That’s why it might be hard to get Festus R-6 padawans to share this particular preview on Facebook. Parents, fans, and boosters may flush excitedly at the prospect of Tiger Stadium hosting its biggest game ever this postseason, but the Tigers’ coaches will wag their fingers at their student-athletes and the pep squad. “Don’t listen to The Gridiron Geek that Festus-Kearney is booked already,” they’ll say. “We have to defeat Sullivan or we’re done for.”
Festus versus Kearney is most assuredly not already slated for Week 14’s semifinals, not if the 2025’s Sullivan Eagles and Warrensburg Tigers have anything to do with it. In case today’s preview feels like a “giddy” forecast of another Highway A bid going all the way the finals, consider that our website isn’t touting Festus-2025 as a Show-Me Bowl team, and has not done so at any point in the year.
FHS isn’t a sure-thing winner in Saturday’s Q-Final. In addition, the boys would feel like underdogs in a semifinal round against either Kearney or Warrensburg, and maybe underdogs again in the Class 4 Show-Me Bowl if they make it back to Week 15. But strangely enough, that’s part of what’s so cool about KHS being on the left side of the bracket.
Class 4 Quarterfinal Matchups (Saturday, Nov. 22)
Festus Tigers at Sullivan Eagles
Kearney Bulldogs at Warrensburg Tigers
^ Winners will meet in State Semifinals on 11/29
Parkway North Vikings at St. Mary’s Dragons
West Plains Zizzers at Hannibal Pirates
^ Winners will meet in State Semifinals on 11/29
Kearney’s presence in the bracket should make the Varsity Tigers more focused on beating the Sullivan Eagles, not less, because if Black & Gold should advance on to Week 14 and the semifinals, hosting the “Kansas City-area champion” on Thanksgiving weekend would be like a Show Me Bowl unto itself. MSHSAA can’t get out of letting R-6 have its next game (if there is one) at home – there would be a Congressional hearing if they made a team play six consecutive state games away! It puts an amount of pressure on Festus High to win this weekend and make what could potentially be the coolest event in Tiger Stadium lore into a reality.
The idea is to play through the pressure to get to a holiday weekend of no pressure. Festus High School would be under zero pressure at all to beat the Kearney Bulldogs, though the winner of that potential fracas could potentially be favored to win the Class 4 title on the weekend to follow. It all comes back to getting a “W” at Sullivan on this Saturday. If Parker Perry’s team can pull that off, everything that can happen by Turkey Day Week is gravy.
Missouri’s Football Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance of Tigers
To help offset this week’s pressure, The Geek senses a motivator for Black & Gold that the players have hopefully picked up on along the way, namely after seeing Week 5’s win over Hillsboro get recapped as a footnote, below several other games, in the Jefferson County Leader. It’s not as crazy as 2020, when Festus going 10-2 led to Mississippi Magazine getting flagged and shut down while fake crime allegations ran in the New York Post. It remains that when the Festus Tigers are winning, it’s a cloudy day, at least insofar as the greater landscape of the Show-Me State is concerned.
Former head coach Russ Schmidt, for instance, showed up to frown on The Gridiron Geek as the Tigers were winning a repeat District 1 championship. Coach Schmidt, of all people! The Gridiron Geek’s blog was partly his idea about a decade ago. We’ve treated Schmidt like a god around here, using his lectures to begin articles, celebrating when DeSoto handed its AD chair over to the FHS coach who built the foundation on which A.J. Ofodile’s program stands. It hurt TGG’s feelings even more that Schmidt’s allegation, that Mississippi Magazine “demeans local coaches,” isn’t true at all. If it was, then coaches old-and-new from Festus, Herky, St. Pius, Hillsboro, Grandview, Crystal City and so on wouldn’t Like, Share, and help line out the recaps.
We’re still paying for what “Limited View Pictures” did five years ago because The Geek’s real identity is still banned on Meta, ultimately over the usage of an age-old Super Bowl photo that Limited View did not own. TGG can’t reach out to anyone about what happened in a scrum with a shaky stream, he’s got to wait for them to reach out first. (So many helpful coaches and parents do.) But it’s a worse problem, for example, when J-98 recaps the scoring plays when Farmington beats up on Festus, but quickly drops the contest off of its Twitter live feeds when Festus is defeating Farmington. No joke!
Our apology to Kamden Yates for botching his position(s) played in conference games had TGG grappling with past trauma. Announcers putting Yates at wide receiver was like 2024’s postseason calls that had “Avery Edwards!” (the defender on the other side) putting Festus High in the final, and “Dashawn Bridgett!” (the Tigers’ senior “WR5” whose season-stats were a token) catching the Tigers’ first state-finals TD pass of the Show-Me Bowl era of Missouri title games instead of the “WR1” Trey Lacey, who got the TD. The Geek still regrets falling for it both times, having to post sloppy late credit to Trey that probably satisfied no one, never stopping to think that the Lutheran North end zone’s “ISO” clip of just two men struggling wouldn’t have come about on a 5-Wides play. TGG can blame trying to cover the whole Show-Me Bowl by listening/glancing at his phone and only watching the closest contests closely, (how stupid!) merely weeks after losing Patricia the Cat to cancer and finding out that his FanDuel division was sued. But the better alibi for The Geek’s unfortunate “Fake Credits” of 2024 was that announcers don’t pay the same attention to FHS that they pay to so many other teams in the field. Why?
The Geek swears he wouldn’t whine about all this if it didn’t relate to the Festus Tigers’ postseason story. The special challenges of reporting FHS pigskin arise due to the disregard, disdain, and distaste that MSHSAA moguls have for the program whether they know it or not. It’s like a culture of cheering for everyone else and wanting the season to be over when Festus is left standing. MSHSAA Football forum users laugh at the Tigers’ victories, calling FHS “soft” and easy to beat. People across hill-and-dale are in bad moods about it. Announcers howl out the wrong names, or fail to pronounce kids’ names (“Rue-Ann Stooker!”) because their interest in the Tigers goes as far as glancing at a roster for nine seconds before the kickoff. Lord knows they get every “Fallert” and “Basler” right. The state playoffs are a party to which the Tigers were never invited. They’re the party crashers!
Think of MSHSAA’s only official podcast – based in Kansas City, of course – calling for Festus to “Lose By Fifty!” last December. (If it wasn’t for Lacey’s catch and a noble second half against Lutheran North, the suckers would’ve been right.) We’ve never seen a team disrespected that badly who made it to Missouri’s ultimate kickoff at Faurot Field, especially not with a coach who’s run onto that field with the Missouri Tigers countless times. Perhaps some other school has had to deal with making the state playoffs often and playing 0-out-of-5 dates on home turf since 2007. TGG assures you that that wouldn’t happen to CBC without a bit of an uproar. Have the powers-that-be forgotten what a motivator disrespect can be for a football team?
The Festus Booster Club has been amazing in more ways than one, helping to promote a new Festus Tigers logo of an “F” pennant over an outline of Missouri itself. The state’s pigskin “establishment” can run, but it can’t hide from Highway A! The good news is that any bias is coming from outside Jeff County, where other teams have been super supportive of the boys’ efforts in the 2024 and 2025 playoffs. Players from St. Pius, Crystal City, Jefferson, and elsewhere showed up in Columbia to cheer the Tigers in the state finals last December. Presumably, the same Kansas City + Bootheel dominated MSHSAA media would want those kids out of the way too, when-and-if they reach Week 14 and beyond. The Festus Tigers can be party-crashers who cannot be held back from hosting the whole party by the holiday weekend, but not just for themselves. They, and the St. Pius X Lancers, represent a community that doesn’t care what Kansas City podcasters think, or whether one single TV announcer was ever hired who gave a crap about FHS.
Festus doesn’t have to “win one for the Gipper” this time. The Tigers can win for Twin City Mall. Missouri’s entire circus will descend on Tiger Stadium in just over one week if Festus R-6 gets through the quarterfinals. To do that, they’ve got to shore up a major weakness from last Friday’s district title tilt.
Sullivan Wants Battle of Wills, Festus Wants Battle of Points in Saturday’s Souree
The R-6 offense has been fabulous. The Festus defense of 2025 is another type of animal, a “momentum” unit that can play as well as the offense, or as bad as 2022’s sagging defense, depending on how the other facets of the game are going. They’re like an SEC placekicker, with a performance tied to the team’s momentum or lack thereof. What happens if Sullivan starts Saturday’s bout with bullish running, and the Tigers’ defense has to respond?
Sullivan has gotten back to its roots. The Varsity Eagles are running often and straight ahead, utilizing a modern Wishbone style like the St. Pius Lancers do without the safety-valve of an intricate playbook in the holster. Playing against Sullivan in 2025, even more so than playing against St. Pius, is a lot like playing the 1991 Herky Blackcats! Sullivan’s “Scott Croom” is the senior running back Mark Jennings, who has raced for nearly 1500 yards this season. Impressively, the Eagles’ other weapon Chase Blue shined in the backfield against Vianney when the Golden Griffins keyed on Jennings.Â
Defensively, the Sullivan Eagles seem to do just enough to win games, and that makes them a lot like last year’s State Semifinal opponent Warrenton. SHS tackler Cameron York has four sacks on the year, giving the Eagles an edge-rusher who’s likely to harass Parker Perry. What stands out, though, is how the Eagles’ defense saved its offense’s hide on unlucky nights when the only way to win, and keep Sullivan’s ample late-season momentum going, was to shut-out or at least shut down the opposing team. Sullivan’s worst day of offense all year might’ve come against the St. James Tigers, who’ve allowed Sullivan’s conference rivals to average 35 points in the Vineyards this year, when the Eagles only scored 10 points. The Sullivan High tacklers punished St. James’ new option-offense in a 10-0 shut-out win, much like the Eagles have stood up to Union’s offense twice in one-score contests.
Festus can lose to Sullivan’s offense if “panic sets in” among Aiden Schirmer’s run defense, as Coach O detailed in the Jefferson County Leader following North County’s gaggle of ground-game yards in the first half of Week 12’s comeback win for FHS. There’s certainly no reason to panic if the Eagles whip up a long drive or two early in Saturday’s quarterfinal, because Festus remains deep and athletic enough in the front-seven to bust up a long Wishbone drive eventually, be it via tackles-for-loss or turnovers. Sullivan’s quarterback Mahlon Foster has only 76 pass attempts on the year, less than Keaton Reeves threw for Herky’s ground-and-pound bid. But if the Tigers defensive backs join in the “panic,” Foster can burn them like he burned Vianney, throwing a Bootleg Pass for the winning two-point conversion to give Sullivan a double-overtime upset win in Week 12’s District 2 championship.
Most of all, though, Festus can lose if it has a bad game on offense because the Sullivan Eagles want a grudging battle of wills on Saturday – they can’t win a track meet against Jackson Frank’s receiving corps, and they probably can’t win one against Leuontae Williams’ offensive backfield. FHS can play through the pressure in the same way that the Tigers did against North County, continuing to run Yates and Williams stubbornly between the hashes if Sullivan stacks the box. Tanglefoot must not lose on turnovers. The boys must protect the ball, and control it, lest Sullivan does the same to them.
It’s hard to know if Warrensburg has the wherewithal to whack Kearney with an upset in Week 13, since the Tigers and Bulldogs are so determined not to play common rivals with any frequency, they might as well be from Jefferson County! Kearney has the superior overall record (11-0) against a somewhat tougher slate than Warrensburg, though what really makes Kearney seem like a lock to reach Week 14 is that KHS is a bad matchup for Warrenburg’s blue-collar defense. Kearney’s latest quarterback Carter Temple is very speedy, capable of scrambling his way out of the tight spots and frustrating Warrensburg on third downs. Much like Parker Perry, he’s only a junior, but already such a responsible sticks-mover that the Bulldogs trust him.
Speaking of “November Show-Me Bowls,” the winner of the Parkway North at St. Mary’s quarterfinal could be bound for St. Joseph on December 5 or 6. That’s a weird thing to claim with the winner of a Hannibal – West Plains quarterfinal contest lurking in the right side of Class 4’s bracket. But the Hannibal and West Plains teams have each been so flaky on defense that neither lineup looks like a favorite in the Elite Eight. The coldest game that Mississippi Magazine’s author has ever experienced was at WPHS, but the Zizzers aren’t icing anyone in 2025. They’ll need lots of points to advance in Class 4.
MHSHAA CLASS 4 STATE PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS:
RIGHT SIDE FINALIST: PARKWAY NORTH VIKINGS
LEFT SIDE FINALIST: KEARNEY BULLDOGS
SHOW-ME BOWL: KEARNEY DEFEATS PARKWAY NORTH
Photo Credits: Purchased from Rivals (Pixieset), Daniel Shular Photography Facebook, Kearney Bulldogs HUDL, Parkway North Vikings HUDL