Before taking the field against a Festus football team making its first appearance in a state championship game, Lutheran North already had run the gauntlet.
The Crusaders, who crushed Festus 46-7 for the Class 4 title Dec. 6 in Columbia, finished 13-0 against teams from Missouri that had won a combined 36 state titles. North’s only loss was in the season-opener at Phenix City, Ala., falling 30-12 to the Red Devils, the defending Alabama Class 7A state champs.
After that loss, the Crusaders launched an historic offensive barrage against some of Missouri’s top programs. In its next four games, North’s average margin of victory over Blair Oaks (five state crowns), John Burroughs (nine), Westminster Christian Academy and Lutheran South was 65-9.
A trip to Mary Institute-Country Day School (two titles) provided North its first in-state challenge, but leading rusher Martez Stephenson’s 89-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter sealed a 28-13 victory.
After blowout wins over Maryville (five titles) and Lutheran St. Charles (one), the Crusaders faced their biggest test of the season against reigning two-time state champion Cardinal Ritter. An epic shootout ended with senior Trey Bass catching a 32-yard touchdown pass from sophomore QB Jonathan Moore in the fourth quarter of a 50-48 comeback victory. In the state final, Bass burned Festus for four TD catches, including one on the first play from scrimmage.
The Crusaders brushed off District 3 opponents Jennings and Miller Career Academy 132-0, but found the quarterfinals and semifinals a different story. Bass and Moore connected for the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter of a 24-18 win at Parkway North and Stephenson scored two TDs and rushed for 154 yards in a 24-21 semifinal win over defending champ Kearney, which has five state championships.
During the press conference after beating Festus, Crusader head coach Kyle Wagner choked up as he talked about his team’s journey to the top. He talked about assistant coaches who provided inspiration.
“(The challenge) isn’t when you win big and everybody’s excited,” Wagner said. “When the game is close, there’s two minutes left and the other team has the ball, can you stay locked in and make a play? This group has been around long enough to know if there’s enough time on the clock (we can win). Against Parkway North, we turned the ball over with them up and 2:00 left. I said, ‘Man, I love this.’ And everybody was like, ‘What?’ But we forced a fumble and scored with seconds left. I love that.
“That’s the way we started the season. We’re going to come out with a shot and we’re going to see what you’ve got. Trey made a heck of a play to start the game (against Festus) and from there we were rolling.”
Thus ended the second year in a row where a school from Jefferson County played into December. That’s a first for the county and assuredly won’t be the last. AJ Ofodile completed his fifth season as head coach at Festus by getting the Tigers farther than they’d ever been.
On a cold morning, from atop Faurot Field in the press box, I watched Festus fans begin to fill the center of the lower bowl of the cavernous Memorial Stadium, which can hold more than 62,000. Hillsboro’s fanbase made a similarly strong showing in the state final last year. Jeffco sports travel well.
“I’m grateful for the senior class and all the time and commitment it takes to get us here,” Ofodile said. “I’ve been around a long time and it’s not something I take lightly. It wasn’t the outcome I wanted, but it doesn’t take away from the work, effort and time it took to get us here.
“The turnout from our community speaks volumes for what Festus is. We’re growing and are going to keep getting better. We’ve won state baseball and track recently and now we’re on the verge with football.”
I asked Ofodile what teams from our county lacked to make their trips to a state final more competitive.
“You can’t lump (schools) together like that,” he said. “(Hillsboro and Festus) are two different programs. The trajectory has been on an upward trend for both. As it currently stands, we were both the second-best teams in the (state). That’s what it comes down to. We lost to opponents that played better than us.
“Kearney and Lutheran North are drastically different in presentation and preparation. The trend you can take from this is you had two teams from Jefferson County here two years in a row. We’re heading in the right direction.”
The local teams have made a lot of progress. But it didn’t take long in the Leader Facebook thread on the state final for someone to propose that private schools should have their own playoffs. That argument is as old as time. But public schools still hold their own in the various sports. Kearney is public; so is Webb City, the state record holder with 16 state football crowns.
There are so many factors in getting as far as Festus and Hillsboro have. You have to avoid injuries – the Tigers couldn’t – and you have to play a challenging schedule that prepares you for the state’s best, as Lutheran North did. The players also have to decide from the minute they take the field as freshmen that they want to work long and hard to compete against guys like Moore and Bass.
My biggest question is, can we make it three years in a row? Programs like Festus and Hillsboro are built to compete every year for conference and district titles, but are they capable of long-term state success? We’ll see as their rosters turn over from year to year. De Soto and Mississippi Area Football Conference coach of the year Russ Schmidt are still trying to gain parity with the Tigers and Hawks. So is Windsor under Lee Freeman.
Seckman went 20-0 the last two seasons before getting humbled at home by Jackson in the Class 6 District 1 final both times. Seckman’s likely “reward” for its recent success will be moving up from the Orange to the Red pool in the Suburban Conference and face tougher opponents. Critics of Seckman’s rise have pointed to easy schedules. But that’s a small part of reengineering a program that had been mired in losing for many years.
Every summer, I visit Jaguar head coach Nick Baer at offseason training camp. It’s not easy supervising more than 100 football players. But strong turnout is what Baer is counting on to sustain the success that he, an alumnus and former Jag player, has built. If he can do that, don’t be surprised to see Seckman make a run at the state’s largest schools.