By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Friday’s Class 2 District 4 football championship at Seneca couldn’t have started much worse for the Indians – they fumbled at their own 41 on the second play of the game, then turned it over on downs at their own 31.
It led to an early 14-0 deficit, but Seneca managed to settle down at halftime and seized the momentum in the third quarter on the way to a 25-21 victory for the school’s second-straight district title.
“It means a ton,” Seneca head coach Cody Hilburn said, “and last year was special but to be able to repeat it and sustain this momentum we’ve got going, that’s hard to do. Credit our kids for what they did in the offseason and getting ourselves back here and finding a way to win tonight.”
Seneca, 10-1, will host Mountain View-Liberty next weekend in the quarterfinals.
But at halftime on Friday the Indians found themselves trailing 21-7 against a surprising Mt. Vernon team that was just 1-9 a year ago.
The Mountaineers capitalized on the good field position early. After Jake Leeper recovered a fumble on the second play from scrimmage, Mt. Vernon scored on a 37-yard run from quarterback Gavin Johnston to lead 7-0.
Then Mt. Vernon’s defense, on a fourth-and-3 from the Seneca 28-yard line, stopped Jackson Marrs inches short. That led to a 2-yard plunge by Braden Dodson to make it 14-0 after Malachi Hennum’s extra point.
Seneca got on the scoreboard with 34-yard touchdown pass from Gavyn Hoover to Ethan Altic with 5:04 left in the first, but Mt. Vernon answered right back.
This time the Mountaineers had to cover 97 yards, but they did it in just nine plays and took a 21-7 lead on another 2-yard run by Dodson with 1:45 left in the first. But the Mountaineers’ momentum started dissipating after that.
Seneca marched 87 yards in 11 plays and scored on a 4-yard run by Hoover with 4:46 left in the half, but missed the extra point and trailed 21-13 at the break.
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After forcing a three-and-out to start the third, Seneca moved to the 19 and gained 10 yards on a fourth-and-2. On a fourth-and-goal from the 2, Marrs took the handoff and scored with 5:49 left in the quarter to make it 21-19. A two-point try was no good.
Then Mt. Vernon turned it over on downs at midfield when a ball was dropped. Later, the Mountaineers got to the Seneca 34 but Conner Ackerson came up with a big interception to stop the drive.
Seneca finally took the lead with 7:44 left in the game, scoring again on a fourth down from the 2. This time Marrs took a direct snap and found the end zone. The two-point try was no good, but the Indians led 25-21.
Mt. Vernon punted with just more than six minutes left, then turned it over on downs with 2:40 remaining and Seneca ran out the clock.
“We settled in,” Hilburn said. “Credit coach (Matt) Crane and our defensive staff, they did some good stuff at halftime, settled us down and we came out and played really good the second half.”
He said it was key not to panic about the early deficit, and said the team’s defense allowed the offense to stick with its game plan.
“I think just when we finally got a stop, we kind of settled into what we were doing,” he said. “We were kind of all over the place early on. We just settled down and trusted what we’ve been taught to do and played really well in the second half.”
“Our identity and everything we do, we’ve got to be physical in the run game so you can win games in November when the temperature starts to drop,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to run the ball and we did that tonight. We did a good job with play action passes when we had to have them.”
Mt. Vernon coach Tom Cox said his team let some opportunities slip through its fingers, both literally and figuratively.
“We didn’t make a couple of catches that we had opportunities for and we just didn’t get momentum,” he said. “I thought Seneca did a nice job at halftime of adjustments and they tried to take away Braden Dodson and they did a good job of that. We’re still playing a lot of young guys and you never quite know exactly how they’re going to react to playing with a lead or playing from behind. We just didn’t get the consistency offensively we had. I think I could have done a better job offensively. Defensively we weren’t able to get off the field on third down, that was a big key for us.”
Mt. Vernon (8-4) finished with 260 yards of offense – 79 of those through the air.
Seneca’s Hoover passed for 171 yards and the Indians rushed for 268. Marrs gained more than 200 of those.
