Happy Thanksgiving to all … and welcome to the Golden Era. We cheer how much 2025’s postseason means to two Festus schools from the Dirty Dozen, not stopping to think of what their ongoing success means for the blog’s whole field of teams. Thanksgiving weekend’s pair of playoff dates makes six state semifinal bids for Jefferson County since 2020, to go with as many as four Show-Me Bowl berths in three years if eastern Missouri wins the day. Northwest has become a powerhouse, Seckman remains 800-100 over the last few years, and Fox High – supposedly our worst Very Large School this midseason – rattled the Farmington Black Knights in the playoffs. St. Pius was celebrating its first Elite Eight berth one week ago. Crystal City had back-to-back Elite Eight appearances in 2023-24. Grandview 2025 nearly won a conference fiiled with Class 3 and Class 4 schools. Herculaneum beat the conference champions handily! Hillsboro and Festus have already combined for (gulp) five wins in state playoff games over the last three years.
Sunny skies remain for Festus, St. Pius, and other local teams even if Kearney and Monroe City combine for a 2-0 record this week. TGG prefers lasting success to championships followed by malaise such as Park Hills Central’s problems for the last two seasons. Jackson hasn’t been winning the state championship in Class 6 (which could change shortly) but the Indians are known as the standard-bearers of the east because they rack up impressive records every fall. The Festus Tigers can count on another talented unit in 2026 with Parker Perry returning to play behind a stellar set of linemen. St. Pius X should have nothing but outstanding lineups going forward, especially in Cody Shaver’s senior year.
Saturday’s weather forecast has something to say about those “sunny skies” though. The 12 pairs of teams in Missouri’s semifinals will be dealing with 2025’s first true taste of foul football weather in Week 14. With a wayward cyclone and temperatures in the 30s expected, the weather on 11/29 is a wild card which could produce rain, snow, or merely a chilly day. Mother Nature finally remembered it’s football time!
Week 14’s predictions can’t wait until Friday night’s update from Steve Templeton. Readers are used to logging off Mississippi Magazine by then. There’s too much at stake not to post in midweek and contribute to the awesome hype in the Tri-Cities right now. So, The Gridiron Geek will have to do what he did before the Festus-Warrenton semifinal of 2024, making “provisional” final score picks based on how different weather (or a surprisingly mild Saturday) could change things for each team. Those who were tracking the Tigers’ journey last November know how to read the Provisional Picks – just look around at the weather on game day, and the corresponding pick on the scroll is the “real” one.
Late Breaking News: The Geek’s foreword for Turkey Day clearly dates back to Monday. Since then, the St. Pius Lancers and Monroe City Panthers have moved their semifinal game one day ahead to Friday, a sportsmanlike turn that gives Monroe City an easier commute across the state … although the Varsity Panthers missed out on some Thanksgiving leftovers with their folks. At this moment, only Platte County and Kirkwood have copied Hill Valley’s idea and moved their Class 5 playoff showdown to Friday. 10 additional games are still advertised for “Saturday.” So, for Week 14, the St. Pius – Monroe City battle gets a SINGLE dry-weather prediction. FHS-KHS still gets three possible scores for Saturday.
St. Pius Lancers vs Monroe City Panthers (Class 2 Semifinal, Friday 1 PM)
Week 13’s rundown tried to go over every surprise in the playoffs, and of course, it didn’t come close. One surprise that could help inspire St. Pius in a field of former state champs is that Class 1’s Hayti Indians are in a Final Four. Now, the Indians’ boosters can remember their postseason glory of the 2010s under reigning head coach Dominique Robinson, but Hayti’s rise this postseason is a message to a team like St. Pius X as it sits in the Class 2 Final Four with decorated brands like Blair Oaks and Monroe City, telling SPX any state tournament is wide open for the taking. Hayti’s form was so flawed to begin this autumn that the Indians looked like the Crystal City Hornets, not the Hornets who scared St. Vincent in the 2023 District Finals, but rather Crystal City in a slump such as Crystal’s downturn of 2025. The Indians dropped from 2-0 to 2-5 after giving up 29 touchdowns and a forfeit loss in five weekends. Two of Hayti’s four regular-season wins came against an Illinois school plus the start-up program Lighthouse. Masterfully, Coach Robinson whipped the Indians into shape to the point where they’ve won three playoff games in a row by lopsided scores (!) including a 38-14 thrashing of Van-Far in the State Q-Finals. Class 1’s remaining field is concerned about Hayti again … probably the last team any of its coaches thought they’d be afraid of.
Oh, and Lee’s Summit, the next school set to give up 28 points in the first 15:00 challenge Jackson in the Class 6 playoffs? Lee’s Summit began the year 0-4 – yes, 0-4 – which is an even worse start than the previously 0-3 St. Pius Lancers had. Take it from the Dallas Cowboys of AT&T Stadium – these days, any team’s season is a marathon, not a Sprint.
Have the Lancers improved as much as Hayti and Lee’s Summit since Week 3? It’s hard to compare Class 1, Class 6, and Class 2 all at the same time, but there’s no doubt we’re watching a very different Hill Valley squad than we watched in September. St. Pius began the season falling short against Small School strongholds like Caruthersville and Knob Noster. SPX has beaten Caruthersville, plus a pair of lineups with similar size and speed as the Tigers, over the last three weeks. A defense led by old friends like Dawson Litterall (86 tackles) and new faces like Lynnden McCoin (102 tackles!) slapped a short-field shutout on Montgomery County last Saturday, making up for the injury loss of Hunter Hylton with dominating penetration up front. St. Pius also added four interceptions to give Jack Michaud’s defensive backfield an epic total of 24 INTs on the campaign.
Cody Shaver’s rushing has been the constant all year as St. Pius has improved from bad to fair to good to great. Critically, the offensive backfield’s become a cast of playmakers at the best time. Opposing DCs might have thought they could key on Shaver and beat the Lancers that way as of Week 7. Now, if they focus on #40 only, they’re asking for trouble.
Monroe City’s own uptick makes the Panthers a pricey market to defeat St. Pius. The Panthers were fried, baked, roasted, and toasted by Valle U.’s offense in a 41-22 loss back in Week 1. Since then, they’ve whipped three double-digit winners, Montgomery County, Centralia, and Mid-Buchanan, by a combined margin of (GULP) 10 touchdowns amidst an 11-game winning streak. Monroe City’s blowout win over 7-4 Palmyra in the playoffs is more evidence that the Panthers have turned it on since October, since those teams played a rematch following a closer game on 10/3. If St. Pius had played Valle in Week 1, the Lancers might’ve lost 41-22. Each of the semifinal’s defenses have grown up in 12 weeks.
There’s no one superstar TD-king at Monroe City in the fashion of Andrew Graves or Cody Shaver. The Panthers run their Wing-T offense with a backfield-by-committee that just happens to be a really, really good committee. Like the Festus Tigers’ offensive backfields of 2018 or 2024, the only thing keeping any one of Monroe City’s speedsters from getting a 2000-total-yards season is that the Panthers distribute the ball so much. Think of Grandview’s latest backfield in which every potential ball-carrier was just about as dangerous as another. Steve Eighinger of Muddy River Sports writes that MCHS’s “running backs Jayden Holland, Quincy Mayfield and Payton Hetheriton all (rushed) for over 100 yards and (combined) to score seven of their team’s eight touchdowns” in the Panthers’ district championship win over Brookfield.
Monroe City’s QB Wyatt DeGrave isn’t protected by a massive, bludgeoning OL like Grandview’s, though. The Panthers’ line is similar to the St. Pius Lancers’ corps of linemen, not especially awesome in size, but who perform with great strength, quickness, stamina, and consistency. Visiting linemen like #58 Kent Holland have the reach and agility to remind The Geek of Kearney’s lineup of “Power Forwards” which vanquished Hillsboro High in 2023’s Class 4 Show-Me Bowl. The “Mini-Me” of Kearney in any form could serve to frighten a Class 2 semifinal host. But the Varsity Lancers won’t be outweighed, outhit, or outmuscled in the trenches unless it’s their own fault – that’s the promising part.
Monroe’s status as a 2017 Show-Me Bowl champion is deceiving, since it was the Class 1 championship and not the Class 2 title that the Panthers captured. They did it with a memorable 12-7 win over Valle, however. Panther Nation will arrive at Hill Valley feeling like they know how to go to Show-Me Bowls while the Lancers have to grapple with their inexperience as a program. That’s technically true, but Monroe City won just 16 times and went 3-2 in the playoffs over the previous two seasons. The MCHS Panthers are just as inexperienced as the Lancers from the point-of-view of the actual players. What’s more, the visitors’ small band of about 12-15 upperclassmen has used-to-be-in-Class-1 vibes.
The Panthers will take the field like a house-on-fire even if its 30 degrees outside on Friday. But they’re not quite as deep as the Lancers, and they’re vulnerable to a second-half comeback should St. Pius be in need of one. If the Lancers are underdogs, it’s less because of the Panthers’ superior record, and more because of how the first half of last week’s quarterfinal went at Hill Valley. Should the St. Pius kids get off to another shaky start like they had against Montgomery County, then Monroe City’s terrific trio of tailbacks will be poised to punish SPX and ring up a 21-0 lead before the Lancers know what’s happening. If, instead, the home team gets off to a good start this time? In that case we might witness a strange turn of events, in which Monroe City looks like the favorite to win for a bit, but St. Pius emerges to look like the better team even if it’s losing at halftime.
It’ll have to be the opposite of last week, in which the St. Pius defense held its ground while the offense got things figured out. St. Pius will have a merry time chasing (RB Jayden) Holland, Mayfield, Hetheriton and Associates around when the semifinal game begins, putting the Lancers’ defensive backfield in 2nd-and-short situations in which they can’t hawk the ball as much as they’re used to. If they try to produce turnovers while Monroe City’s opposing offense is humming, it could lead to quick TDs for the Panthers. But if the Lancers control the ball from the get-go, mounting TD drives to offset any of MCHS’s early success, Kyle Hylton’s defense can find its way against a hot team that will cool off if forced to throw the pigskin too much. We want to see a second half in which Harrison Ray’s deep threat keeps the turf open for Shaver, while MCHS has no home-run plays of its own.
St. Pius gave up an advantage by keeping Week 14’s fight out of the rain and snow. TGG was psyched to see St. Pius meet Monroe City in a RAIN GAME. Mississippi Magazine was going to give SPX a “RAINFALL: St. Pius 20, Monroe City 12” prediction – Scout’s Honor – because in a rain game St. Pius could have used blockers like Mike Moss to pivot, punch, and sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide Monroe City’s linemen all the way to the goal line, like Festus did in the Tigers’ 1994 Quarterfinal victory over New Madrid in a hard rain. However, the Saturday-to-Friday cloud’s silver lining (or sunshine) is that the Lancers’ special teams, which struggled last Saturday, will enjoy better conditions to snap the football in. The punt team has to keep Monroe City in worse field position than Montgomery County had in Week 13, so that the Panthers don’t have all four downs to work with, to make it impossible to stop their three RBs.
Monroe City has more experienced skill players ready to handle the bean on a cold day. We can see a St. Pius comeback bid falling short when the ball bounces off Harrison Ray’s numb fingers. An even tilt in the trenches won’t scare MCHS’s running backs, who know how to streak up a level field. But if St. Pius X manages to win the line-of-scrimmage over one of the least-massive Missouri teams left standing? Wave goodbye to The Geek’s take, and say hello to the Show-Me Bowl. PREDICTION: MONROE CITY 22, LANCERS 14
Festus Tigers vs Kearney Bulldogs (Class 4 Semifinal, Saturday 1 PM)
Will he tout the offense! Will he praise the defense! Nope, we are focused on Special Teams going into the Festus vs Kearney semifinal at Tiger Stadium. Special teams could seem like a weird topic for a playoff prediction, since Kearney hasn’t needed to kick any last-minute field goals while romping to a 12-0 record, and since Festus kicker Luke Wacker has had a “Lucy and Charlie” season in which coaches invent reasons not to tag him for an easy, short FG on 4th-and-5. Weirdness … unless you watched the 2023 Show-Me Bowl.
Hillsboro’s defense allowed 60+ points to the Kearney Bulldogs in a Class 4 Show-Me Bowl defeat two years ago, but it was the Varsity Hawks’ self-destruction on special teams that kept HHS from any chance to win the title. Bill Sucharski’s special-teams coaches called for an insane number of “here, take it” tapped kickoffs to Kearney, giving the greedy Bulldogs field position to dream of throughout the whole contest. Hillsboro could have kicked on-side and tried to recover the ball every time like Pulaski Academy, gained a few possessions to keep the bean away from Kearney, and not given up any worse field position than it did. Kearney’s dynamic offense of 2023 was so good that it usually made conversions on third downs when necessary. Hillsboro’s choice to start Kearney at midfield on every turn gave the Bulldogs four downs with which they were unstoppable.
If Kearney were still as aggressive on offense as it was back then, the Festus Tigers could choose to adopt the “Pulaski” tactic, ask Wacker to whack as many on-side kicks as possible, and try to win a basketball game instead of football, to prevail 56-55 behind eight Parker Perry touchdown passes. In 2025, the Bulldogs are bent on power-run football, trying to control the ball for 30:00, and often succeeding at it. QB Carter Temple’s supporting cast is an ensemble like Festus and Monroe City will sport this weekend. Kearney’s defense is one of the best in Missouri, and the Bulldogs’ latest style of frequent tight formations and dogged running has helped lead to six wins in which Kearney’s first string allowed 0 points.
Kearney probably can’t score 60 points against a Mississippi Conference school this time around. The Bulldogs won’t really be trying to. Kearney’s 24-0 shutout of 10-2 Savannah in the District 8 Championship Game was a blueprint for how the Bulldogs plan to win the Show-Me Bowl. You don’t need to have scored more than 24 points when you hogged the football before putting an elite and fresh-legged defense on the gridiron. Temple’s running keeps the chains moving for Kearney’s grinding drives when all else fails.
That kind of strategy, however, gives the Festus Tigers a potential lifeline this Saturday. Head coach A.J. Ofodile’s brand is still unproven against MSHSAA championship contenders who aren’t called the Farmington Black Knights, going 0-6 against Jackson, Valle, and DeSmet over the last five seasons while losing to Hillsboro’s great lineups of 2021-23. The boys gave up a big early lead to Farmington before coming back to beat the fast-paced Knights in Week 8. The last thing you want in Week 14 is for the Tigers’ defense to have to go up against another “Jackson” or “DeSmet” who could toss 40 passes and try to run FHS right off the field with a 35-7 lead. Kearney’s more methodical style of today means that the semis could become a battle of strength and will at the line-of-scrimmage. Festus has played fabulous football against its power-running opponents this year, shutting down Hillsboro, Rolla, and Sullivan.
Festus has to trust a kickoff-and-punt coverage team that’s had a seesaw year. Kearney is unlike Sullivan because the Sullivan Eagles had no recourse like Temple’s arm and legs on third down, and no running backs as good as 5’11” senior Corbin Emmons of KHS, who can turn a short-field opportunity into a touchdown against a defense as strong as that of the Tigers. The Geek thinks Midmeadow Lane’s wonderful OL-DL combo, led by studs like Connor Rush and Antonio Pinkston, could win a contest of strength and stamina against Kearney easier than the FHS defensive backfield could cope with a Kearney-2023 fleet of wide receivers and tight ends. But it won’t happen if Kearney starts its drives at midfield, utilizing all four downs and patiently waiting for Emmons or Temple to find paydirt. It can only happen if FHS trusts its kicking, tackles KHS’s returner, and defends three downs.
Bad weather could turn a Festus special-teams advantage into a gold mine of points for the Tigers. Kamden Yates and Jackson Frank are a dual threat to take any kickoff or punt back to the house for R-6 if Kearney’s coverage men make one false move on a wet, potentially icy field. Wacker is adept at mid-range kickoffs that could trick the Bulldogs and mint turnovers of a slippery bean. Most importantly, the foul weather that’s forecast for Saturday gives the Tigers’ punt team, and the coaches who must decide to punt, extra incentive to let it fly. There’s no pressure to boom the ball 50 yards downfield and encircle the PR. Get a solid 40-yard punt bouncing, and if Kearney tries to touch it, it could suffer a disaster.
If saddled with bad field position, Kearney could wind up playing ball-control against itself, like so many victims of Herculaneum’s defense in the old days. Festus should try to bleed the clock and get into a tight Quarter 4 even if the Bulldogs are winning by a touchdown or two in midgame. QB Parker Perry will succumb to Kearney’s epic edge-rushers if Festus makes it a point to try to produce wide-open TDs from the start. But if the Tigers keep things close to the vest? By the final 12:00, Perry could catch Kearney in the Perfect Storm.
Perry’s got accuracy that Temple doesn’t have, and the Tigers must open up and take advantage of it when the time is right. Festus has ways of keeping a fourth-quarter pass rush out of Perry’s pocket even if Leuontae Williams isn’t getting 4.0 YPC up the middle. The Tigers’ best play is a simple Screen Pass to Yates, who won’t have any back-side tacklers to worry about if Kearney’s set of big men is trapped behind the line in conditions that make it hard to turn and run the other way. We can see the Tigers closing a late-game gap on Kearney without doing more than tossing Yates, Frank, David Russell, and Gus Drinen the pigskin on short flares. But there’s always a threat of Perry launching a home run.
“How will the weather affect Saturday’s Class 4 state semifinal?” asks Hal Neisler of Regional Radio.
Glad you asked, Hal! As promised, here are three weather-contingent Final Score Predictions for Festus vs Kearney:
Prediction #1: Surprisingly Dry Conditions
Kearney proves a little too much for a Festus team that wasn’t supposed to win 10 games this season. Perry gets hot in the second half, and Jackson Frank adds a touchdown on a kick return to draw within a TD of the Bulldogs, but Temple hits Emmons on a 40-yard Screen Pass of Kearney’s own to make it 35-21. FINAL SCORE: KEARNEY 35, TIGERS 21
Prediction #2: Expected Rain, Surprisingly Mild Air
TGG’s afraid that Kearney also has an edge in a mild rain if Saturday’s skies turn gentle. If it’s a SOGGY semifinal contest, the DEEP Field Turf at Tiger Stadium will tend to get even wetter and heavier than you can believe underneath the boys’ feet. (The Geek knows this from letting his date flop down on the 50-yard line once, three days after a rain, and apologizing for the next two hours.) It’s the conditions for Emmons’ blockers to get an athletic Festus defensive line sliding the wrong way, and it isn’t advantageous for Russell to run his wide-receiver routes on a slow, soggy gridiron, either. You have to favor the power-football kingpins on a slower surface. PREDICTION: KEARNEY 24, TIGERS 13
Prediction #3: Snow and Sleet, Freezing Temperatures
Ooooooh!!! Now we’re talkin’. Ofodile’s 0-6 record against Show-Me Bowl tycoons is a blip on his otherwise shiny stats, but you know what’s not a blip? Ofodile’s offense is one of MSHSAA’s handiest units on a slippery field, and his defense has triumphed in the snow. It was a snowfall in which Festus conquered Warrenton in last year’s semifinals, showcasing how the Tigers can pare things down, protect the ball, and win a contest of execution on an ice rink. Pinkston can track Temple down on a freezing field, on which the electrifying Kearney signal-caller can’t use all of his hottest moves. Russell, Drinen, and Frank can press the Tigers’ advantage in playmakers at wide receiver, making one move to get Kearney’s defensive backs to slip and fall down, or at least slow down, searching for traction in the frost of a Wintry Mix postseason battle. Midmeadow Lane’s offense can hop, skip, and jump down a treacherous field while opponents miss their turns. The Gridiron Geek was saying that long before Week 14 of last season.
Essien Smith’s snowy “NFL Films” touchdown pass at Warrenton ran on a million TV screens thanks to KTVI’s Prep Red Zone. If it looks like the Tigers could make Snow Angels on the gridiron again, look out for an FHS upset victory and an earth-shaking second consecutive State Finals bid for Black & Gold. PREDICTION: TIGERS 26, KEARNEY 20
Enjoy watching the holiday football, everyone. Go Tigers and Lancers!
Photo Credit: St. Pius X Football Facebook