Senior Max Wheeler caught 5 passes for 35 yards and 3 touchdowns Friday, while Kale Meyer ran 74 yards for another and Layton Cheaney scored on a 25-yard run, but it wasn’t enough to lift St. Vincent (0-1) past host Ste. Genevieve (1-0) in the season opener for both teams.
Ste. Genevieve finished with 472 yards of offense and 7 touchdowns Friday to claim a decisive, 49-35 victory, earning some measure of revenge after last year’s blowout 53-0 loss to the Indians.
This year, the Dragons were a bit more prepared, quickly building a 21-14 lead in the first quarter, then working their way to a 42-21 lead by halftime.
“As the game went on, I thought we made some good adjustments and started playing better on both sides of the ball,” said St. Vincent coach Tim Schumer. “To start, you know, I’ve said going into the season, we just lack a little bit of experience. Losing so many seniors and then having guys step up, and so they got their first taste. I think once they kind of settled in and started playing, I felt like we did some good things, but we just kind of dug ourselves in too deep of a hole.”
Ste. Genevieve rushed for 275 yards in the first half, including 4 touchdown runs from Luke Ferranto — one for 67 yards in the first quarter and three more for 42, 8 and 2 yards in the second — and one each from Wyatt Grein (37 yards) and Owen Roth (41) in the first quarter.
Wheeler scored twice on passes of 6 and 12 yards from junior quarterback Andrew Schumer in the first quarter and senior Kale Meyer scored on a 74-yard run in the second to set the halftime margin.
“Kale Meyer had a really good game for us,” Schumer said. “He had a 76-yard touchdown run and he had five catches for 46 yards. And had a couple of really nice returns in the special team side of things. That was really good for him. He’s a senior guy that he’s played for us, but this is his first real opportunity to be one of the main contributors, as far as more so than just a role player. I also thought Andrew Schumer came in as our quarterback and did well in his first start as a junior, distributed the ball well, and overall did well for us, had three touchdowns through the air, so that was big for him to kind of get that experience and build off of it.”
After the break, St. Vincent added another touchdown in the third quarter, when Schumer found Wheeler one more time for a 12-yard scoring pass to make it 42-28. Not long after, freshman Hunter Mattingly took over the quarterback position after that, in what Coach Schumer described as a strategic move.
“It got to the point where, late in the fourth quarter, they subbed their [junior varsity] in,” Schumer said, “so we subbed ours in. It’s Week 1. We don’t want to get anybody hurt late in a game like that. Mattingly did well. He had a couple nice runs and our JV actually was able to score our last touchdown.”
Before that happened, Ste. Genevieve’s JV squad added a touchdown of their own, as Justin Schweigert scored on a 1-yard run. St. Vincent sophomore Layton Cheaney closed out the scoring with a 9-yard touchdown run to set the final margin.
Ferranto finished with 178 yards and 4 touchdowns on 14 carries. Meyer had 74 yards and 1 touchdown on his only carry of the night, while Cheaney finished with 29 yards and a touchdown on 7 carries.
Meyer had 5 catches for 46 yards, while Wheeler finished with 37 yards and 3 touchdowns on 5 catches. Schumer, filling in for injured starter Wyatt Winkler, completed 15 of 30 passes for 132 yards and 3 touchdowns with 1 interception.
Schumer said he expects to see a different team this week when the Indians host Valle Catholic in their home opener in Perryville.
“You see your biggest jump in how you play from Week 1 to Week 2, just because you get that first taste of competition where you’re going against another team,” Schumer said. “All summer long, you’re scrimmaging yourself, so you kind of can’t tell where exactly you’re at. In the Jamboree, you’re trying to get everybody snaps and it’s all watered down just because people don’t want to show much of what they’re going to do for the regular season. After Week 1, you get the film on the other team you’re about to play and you also get film on yourself to where you can go back and look at what things we’re doing that we need to work on or what we’re doing that maybe we need to tweak a little and kind of finding your identity.
“It’ll be a big week where we look at the films from Friday night and figure out the mistakes, correct them, have a good week of practice, and then go out there. It’s not Week 1 anymore, so you know a little bit more about what to expect come Friday night, and just come ready to play, and it’s our home opener.”
Valle Catholic (1-0), which posted a 41-22 victory over Monroe City last week, holds a 16-1 edge over St. Vincent since 2010. The Indians’ only victory over the Warriors in the past 14 seasons came in 2024, when St. Vincent walked away with a 24-7 victory on the road.
