By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
An interception return for a touchdown in the final minute of the first half gave Mt. Vernon its first lead on Friday night and the Mountaineers never trailed again in a 35-21 win over Mountain Grove in the Class 3 District 5 semifinals.
Mt. Vernon, seeded second in the district and ranked 7th in the final state rankings of the regular season, advances to take on top seed Strafford next week.
“This will be our third year in a row playing for a district championship,” Mt. Vernon coach Tom Cox said. “Seneca’s ended our season the last two so if we can play well we hope to be able to compete with Strafford. They’ve got an excellent football team, got some great players. It’s so weird for us to be in this district––we’ve never been away from the Big 8 and there’s not one team in this district that Mt. Vernon has ever played in varsity football in the history of the school. We played Strafford one time in a JV game years ago but other than that we really don’t know a whole lot about this district.”
The Mountaineers (8-3) got their first-ever win over a Mountain Grove (7-4) team that was seeded third (ranked 10th in Class 3) and had allowed an average of just 14 points per game this season. It was the Panthers who were in control early on.
The visitors opened the scoring with a 5-yard touchdown run by Destin Unger after Mt. Vernon went 3-and-out to open the game, a possession that included a fumble for a 2-yard loss and a false start penalty. The Mountaineers fumbled it again on their second possession and this time the Panthers recovered, but two plays later they fumbled it right back.
Mt. Vernon tied it with 1:31 left in the first quarter on a 45-yard run by Braden Dodson, and then stopped the Panthers on 4th-and-3 from the Mt. Vernon 38 when Hunter Conway sacked Mountain Grove quarterback Aden Estep for a 5-yard loss.
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But then Mountain Grove’s Kale Gardner intercepted a pass and returned it to the Mountaineer 32-yard line, and on second down the Panthers took a 14-7 lead when Braydon Curtiss scored on a 30-yard run.
Momentum started to swing on an 87-yard scoring drive from Mt. Vernon just before the half. It lasted 17 plays, and included a 4th-and-8 screen pass from Gavin Johnston to Dodson for 21 yards. Dodson later scored on a 3-yard run to tie it with 3:17 left in the second quarter.
The visitors, set to get the ball to start the second half, tried to tack on one more score in the final minute and drove to the Mt. Vernon 43. But then Coy Felton intercepted a pass and ran untouched more than 60 yards for a touchdown with 32 seconds on the clock to make it 21-14.
Mountain Grove went 3-and-out to start the second half in a steady rain, and Felton added a long punt return to set the Mountaineers up at the Panthers’ 43. Dodson made it 27-14 with a 6-yard touchdown at the 6:09 mark.
“We’ve done pretty well in the second half coming out like that this year,” Cox said. “I wish it wouldn’t take us quite so long sometimes to get going … but I was proud of the way we overcame those setbacks and then just kept playing. What do you say about Braden Dodson that hasn’t already been said? That dude is just a workhorse, just really an amazing player.”
Dodson would total 38 carries in the game, for 222 of Mt. Vernon’s 248 rushing yards.
The Panthers weren’t ready to call it a night, though, and pulled within 27-21 with 1:23 left in the third when Unger scored on a 9-yard run on 4th-and-3. Mountain Grove earlier converted a 4th-and-8 at midfield, with Cooper Hoerning gaining 34 yards.
Less than a minute later, it appeared momentum had shifted decidedly in Mountain Grove’s favor when a Dodson fumble gave the Panthers the ball 33 yards from the end zone. But Mt. Vernon’s defense only allowed a yard, and the visitors turned it over on downs after throwing incomplete on 4th-and-9.
Mt. Vernon put the game away with a 5-yard touchdown from Dodson––his fourth of the night––with 3:44 remaining. Felton hauled in a 13-yard pass from Johnston on 4th-and-5 at the 21, and Juliun Hernandez later caught the 2-point conversion.
Mountain Grove threw incomplete on 4th-and-11 at the 50 with 2:30 left to effectively end the game.
“We made some mistakes, particularly early, and then we made some late but we overcame them,” Cox said. “That was one of the big things we talked about was there’s going to be some adversity at some point during this game and we’ve just got to overcome it and keep playing. I’m super proud of the way our guys did. Braden doesn’t usually put the ball on the ground and he had two that got on the ground tonight, they got one of them, and then Gavin threw the interception that could have been costly but we just kept playing and I was really proud that we ran the ball like we did, when we had to in the rain. And when it came down to it, we completed two huge passes on that drive to get us to 35.
“I have a lot of respect for coach (Dan) Swofford and for that Mountain Grove team and the program,” he said. “I think they’re going to be a handful the next couple years.”
Cox was also pleased with Hunter Dawson’s kicking; he’s been the team’s punter all season and has stepped in as kicker the last two weeks after Landon Popa was injured against Monett.
“He’s a great punter but he’s just really picked us up,” he said. “Last week he was 7 for 8 on extra points and then this week he just missed the one and we converted on the two-point conversion and got the margin back up there. The guys did well. I think they had fun playing in the rain. It was a lot more fun when we were up two scores, I’ll tell you that.”
