By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Trailing 14-7 in the second half of Saturday’s Class 3 quarterfinal, Seneca head coach Cody Hilburn told his players they’d get a big stop, go down and score and then go for two to win the game.
The big stop came with less than 10 minutes remaining when Seneca’s Dominick Wheeler recovered a fumble near midfield. But two plays later, Seneca fumbled the ball back and visiting Mexico drove 49 yards and scored to put the finishing touches on a 20-7 defeat of the Indians.
“I felt like the momentum swung right there,” Hilburn said.
“That was the mindset, our kids knew it,” he said. “You come back to Aurora (a 13-12 win two weeks ago), we were down 12-0 and you could have never imagined that in our locker room. You would have thought we were up 12-0. That’s just our mentality that we were going to find a way to win in the fourth quarter. That’s been who we are. We had to trade blows with some people that may have been more talented than us early on but we knew if we got the game to the fourth quarter our kids believed we could win. We believed to the very end there we were going to win the game. It just didn’t go our way.”
The loss capped a bounce back year for Seneca, which finished with an 8-5 record after going just 3-7 last season. Even earlier this season, a run to the quarterfinals seemed improbable. Eight weeks in, the Indians had just lost three of four games and stood at 4-4 overall after a 41-0 loss at Lamar.
But then Seneca beat Monett by five and opened district play with a 40-16 win over Buffalo. Then came the one-point win against Aurora, and last week’s 24-18 win against Mountain Grove gave the Indians their first district championship since 2013.
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Hilburn told the players on Saturday that this was the group that got Seneca football going again.
“The perception when I got here, and we’ve kind of played on this since the time I got here, was that this may be a transition year for us,” he said. “These guys getting a new coach and they lost a lot of seniors last year so on paper I don’t think we were maybe thought of to get to this point but all along these guys have done everything I’ve asked them to. We’ve never focused on our record or what success looks like, we just want them to show up and focus on daily improvement. It was never about our regular season record, it was just about getting better each and every week.”
“I’ve never seen a group like this that wanted to win so much and would literally do anything for you,” Hilburn said. “You didn’t have to beg them to show up and work hard, they wanted to show up and work hard. They wanted to have an identity and leave a legacy for themselves and they did. They won our first district championship in the past eight years at Seneca and Seneca has historically been a rich tradition football program and that’s what we’re trying to get back to.”
Things started well enough on Saturday against a Mexico team coming off four-straight wins by an average of 35 points. The Bulldogs drove to the Seneca 5-yard line to start the game but were stopped on downs, then had to punt on their next possession.
The Indians found the end zone first when Jackson Marks scored from the 4 with 6:34 left in the half. That came after a 72-yard drive that included a fourth-and-five conversion in the red zone.
Mexico answered barely a minute later when Andrew Runge scored on a 13-yard run and the teams went into the half tied at 7.
Seneca’s offense struggled with penalties most of the game, which ended several promising drives. The Indians had driven to the Mexico 33 later in the second quarter, but back-to-back holding penalties and a sack backed them up all the way to their own 30.
The Indians got as close as the Mexico 31 to open the third quarter, but another holding penalty and a false start led to a Seneca punt.
The Bulldogs responded with a quick strike; quarterback Ty Sims threw a short pass to Michael White, who weaved his way through the secondary and scored on a 60-yard reception to make it 14-7.
Then Seneca drove to the red zone but fumbled on a fourth-and-6 with roughly a minute left in the quarter. The Indians punted on their next possession, then traded fumbles before Mexico’s White added a four-yard touchdown to make it 20-7.
Mexico’s Anthony Shivers effectively ended the game with an interception with three minutes remaining.
“Probably early on I wouldn’t have dreamed of us getting to this point,” Hilburn said. “I wanted to set a bar for us that next year we could shoot to achieve but they just wouldn’t ever settle for that being the case. And they’re heartbroken tonight. I fully expected – we all did, to come out and win this game tonight.”
Mexico, 10-2, advances to play 10-1 St. Mary’s in the semifinal round next weekend.
