By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
An undefeated regular season wasn’t a specific goal for Seneca’s football team, but the Indians can enjoy it nonetheless after accomplishing the feat for the second year in a row on Friday night.
Seneca opened up a 35-point lead before halftime and went on to win by 50 against Lamar to match the Indians’ biggest margin of victory this season––and mark the sixth time in nine games they’ve scored at least 55 points.
“I’m just proud of our kids, that’s hard,” Seneca coach Cody Hilburn said. “It’s never a goal of ours to go undefeated in the regular season, that’s not on our goal board. It’s hard for 15, 16, 17-year-olds to do, to maintain focus for that many weeks. So to do it two years in a row is special, but it’s not our goal. We came up a little bit short last year and these guys have been on a mission ever since we got back last year.”
Seneca’s defense pitched a shutout despite the final score, with Lamar’s touchdown coming on an interception by Terren Williams, who picked off a short pass inside the Seneca 20 and trotted into the end zone. There weren’t many other highlights on Friday for a Tigers team that dropped to 5-4 and scored its fewest points by far this season.
Lamar had the first two possessions of the game––the Tigers went 3-and-out and punted, but recovered the ball at the Seneca 40 and then turned it over on downs. They didn’t record a first down until the second quarter, and it was their only one of the first half against a Seneca team that has held opponents to two touchdowns or less in all but two games.
“They’ve been like that all year, I think we’re giving up like 12 points a game,” Hilburn said. “Coach (Matt) Crane and our defensive staff do a tremendous job. Our kids put a lot of work into a game plan and they’ve done it for nine straight weeks now.”
Seneca quarterback Kaden Clouse scored on a 5-yard run with 4:31 left in the first quarter and added the two-point conversion to open the scoring. He passed to Tyrone Harris for a 37-yard score a minute into the second, and then Brodie Probert threw a 29-yard touchdown pass to Blaze Graham barely a minute later after Seneca’s Hagen Ginger recovered a fumble at the 34.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE GAME
Clouse scrambled for a 6-yard score with 1:46 left to make it 28-0, and then the Indians recovered another Lamar fumble, this time at the 33, and Clouse connected with Ginger for a 12-yard touchdown with six seconds remaining for the five-touchdown lead.
The interception return by Lamar halted the running clock less than three minutes into the third quarter, but Seneca answered with a 3-yard score by Probert with 4:38 on the clock to make it 42-7.
Probert threw a 35-yard touchdown pass to Ginger early in the fourth, and the Indians’ final score was a 1-yard touchdown run by Brant Laughlin with 3:41 left in the game.
Seneca (9-0) heads into district play as the top seed in Class 3 District 6 and gets a bye before playing in the semifinals. Hilburn said the Indians completed phase one of their season on Friday.
“Phase two is the district tournament and we were fortunate to get a bye and we’ve got a bunch of stuff to clean up,” he said. “We’ve got too many pre-snap penalties and things like that that are hurting us. We’ve got to get that cleaned up and the next phase is two games for us, a district semifinal and a district final. And we’ve got to win phase two and then our kids are hungry to get back to phase three.”
