How does Jefferson County look like even a slight favorite to win the Class 3, District 2 championship, after playing six really bad quarters out of eight on Friday night? Only in the bonkers, bananas, and berserk landscape of MSHSAA in 2026 is that possible.
If it turned into a “Tale of Two Games” for the Tri-City teams, the victorious St. Pius X Lancers had to endure a Tale of Two Halves first. Park Hills Central shook up the Varsity Lancers much like St. Pius the Tenth put the fear of eleven “0-2” refrigerator stickers into Gibson Southern’s defense for about 45 minutes of Week 1’s bowl event in Indiana. The Rebels began with a well-rehearsed drive produced out of various new formations, then tricked the Lancers with a fake field-goal attempt touchdown pass for a 7-0 lead. Soon to follow was the Rebels next daring fourth-down gamble, a downfield TD toss from CHS’s greenhorn QB Kamden Schweiss to tight end Brody Cole later in the first quarter. (The Geek anticipated at least one Rebels touchdown play with the word ‘Brody’ in it, but a blind Pigg can’t always find the acorn, and the reports of Pigg’s return in Week 11 didn’t pan out.) Not only was Park Hills Central ahead 14-0 in a flash, despite the greenness of its quarterback, the Lancers’ vaunted offense just wasn’t going anyplace fast.
The scariest part of Park Hills’ early double-digit lead wasn’t the shorthanded Lancers’ lineup. In fact, the inexperienced presence of more than one JV-to-Varsity convert on defense ran a close third in the post-Halloween fright category. The Geek’s liver turned a Rebel hue of pink when St. Pius tried to shift to its famed “Multiple” offense with a spread package of wide receivers for quarterback Evan Eckrich – and it was sickening to see that that St. Pius X offense simply wasn’t there anymore. The kids couldn’t block for it, Eckrich had no timing for it, and CHS feasted on every pass rush like it was a Screen Pass. Meanwhile, the loud crowd that The Geek anticipated seemed to be hushed and small in number, from the POV of The Geek and his scouts on a PPV Multi-View.
No wonder the crowd was so quiet after Central took its fearful 14-0 lead. But it was weird that the St. Pius crowd didn’t even seem into it through the field’s microphones when the teams first took the pitch. Park Hills’ crowd seemed to outshout the SPX crowd in introductions, funny because they were dotting Hill Valley’s far bleachers in large part. Did everyone ignore The Geek’s (albeit hypocritical) advice and stay home to watch on TV? Good golly, the 2026 season could’ve ended on a T.S. Eliot “whimper,” decorated by the Corkscrew motion of a Park Hills backfield that looked every bit as dangerous as we thought it might.
That’s when the St. Pius Lancers began St. Pius-ing again, in the sense that you can watch certain college teams play their forever-underdogs sometimes, and say, “Uh Oh, Georgia is Georgia-ing!” The Lancers didn’t have a big, fat turning point of a good break that sparked their comeback effort, unless you count a recovered fumble on the CHS 31-yard line that set up Brody Ervin’s first touchdown, which tightened the gap to 14-7 early in the second quarter. St. Pius X was still trailing Central, 14-7, at halftime.
A new SPX Lancers team took the field for Quarter 3, and – to this reporter’s ears, anyway – different fans descended on the host bleachers at Hill Valley. They went insane when QB Evan Eckrich threw 33 yards to diving WR Harrison Ray to give St. Pius its first lead with 7:28 left in Quarter 3. They roared, screamed, and shouted when Dawson Litterall’s 30-yard TD catch gave the Lancers a 27-17 edge, Eckrich’s offense now fully engaged, and beginning to block for explosive plays down the boundary. The offensive line remembered its “NCAA” tactics well enough to manufacture big gaps for Eckrich to scramble through, helping the QB avoid that penetrating Park Hills rush that remained lively enough to hurt St. Pius in the final 24:00.
Brody Ervin gutted out a mammoth performance, scoring three TDs, in utter defiance of his “doubtful” injury report at Mississippi Magazine. His tying TD gallop down the near hash sparked Father Dalton II’s first real roar of the evening, giving the Lancers life – but the audience’s decibel level was about to crank-up higher. When a set of Week 11’s consistently overbearing referees interfered with SPX’s comeback momentum several times, what’s usually the most reserved crowd in JeffCo turned into the Buffalo Bills’ crowd in a meeting with the Kansas City Chiefs, SHRIEKING at the officials sticking their beaks in every dang play! (It was much the same at Midmeadow Lane.) It was turning into a NFL crowd’s atmosphere – from the most unruly section of the Dawg Pound. Meanwhile, crowd noise just kept building, louder at every turn, until The Geek was sure folks were calling their families like Billy Beane’s daughter from “Moneyball” – ‘WHATEVER ELSE YOU ARE DOING IS NOT IMPORTANT. GET TO THE STADIUM, NOW!’
Not that this HUDL highlight’s audio isn’t very quiet. (The irony!) But if you turn up your phone’s volume, you can get a sense of the bedlam. Mississippi Magazine won’t offend MSHSAA TV by putting out freebies of its PPVs in the association’s best era of all time.
St. Pius X’s romp through Quarter 4 resembled last year’s state-playoff team a great deal. But the Lancers still have to show that they can block, execute, and score for 48:00 at a time in setups other than the Wishbone, which went nowhere in the early-going against CHS. Also, if the Lancers’ easy final 12:00 doesn’t help lead to more players returning, SPX will be an underdog against Week 12’s opponent St. Clair, whose resume of state-playoff appearances was lauded by the Lancers in Week 11’s postgame.
Speaking of which, we’re still trying to pin down all of the brave “Junior Varsity” performances (in a total 180 from the low pressure of JV to the high pressure of Districts) to credit those rookies for filling in as well. We assume they will dress out for the next Friday.
Eckrich had his best outing of 2026 through the air. The junior was 8-of-11 with two explosive TD passes. He scrambled for a long fourth-down conversion on another play from early in the bout that The Geek remembers vividly, simply bailing out a dreadful pass-blocking offensive line that that could not remember the last time – maybe last Week 14? – that their Shotgun Spread played such an integral role in beating a tough opponent. By the end, they shook off the eons of rust, and blocked for the more wide-open attack.
Ervin, playing through pain, accounted for a sensational 234 yards. RB Javier Pulido, not Cole Pavlovits, got the critical role of RB2 in Cody Shaver’s absence, and shined with 52 yards and a touchdown. David Schulte anchored the defense with two sturdy feet.
St. Clair won its semifinal in surprisingly easy fashion, dismissing the physical Herky Blackcats 43-0. It was more than a disappointing effort from Herculaneum, it was also a scary performance from the District 2 Championship Game guests on November 13. St. Clair outclassed Herky, jumping on its early momentum to grab a 14-0 lead before settling into a shut-down defensive icing that put R-5 on the same side of the coin that the Blackcat defense flipped Lutheran South on last week.
Herculaneum was slugging it out with DeSoto not long ago. Before that, the Blackcats rang up an extended win streak. Herky wasn’t quite as talented as Park Hills Central in 2026, but Dunklin might have been meatier and deeper than the Rebels at lineman and linebacker. Plus, HHS has had so many skill players contributing with explosive plays, the Blackcats can always turn to their alternate offensive backfield or formation to get the sticks moving. But the Bulldogs defense was just too good to allow it.
Country Day finally defeated 4-6 Lutheran North, like The Geek originally thought the Rams might, knocking the Crusaders out while staking a claim as Class 3’s most probable state-semifinal team from the District 3-4 ranks. But in reality, neither of those schools have played any consistent defense worth a lick in ’26. Kennett and St. Clair, the big-shots of the D1-D2 quadrant, may be as dangerous as anyone on the eastern side of the bracket, putting pressure on St. Pius X to play its best football right away.
Photo Credit: St. Pius X Football Facebook