KENNETT — Perryville’s up and down football season came to an end Friday night with a 56-28 loss to the Kennett Indians in the Class 3, District 1 playoffs.
21 of Perryville’s 28 points came in the first half, and the Pirates had the game tied with a chance to take the lead late in the second quarter, but a turnover turned the momentum over to the Indians, who were able to double up, scoring before the half and on the other side of the break.
“The last four minutes of the first half and the first four of the second half was really the difference in the game,” Perryville head coach Brent Roth said. “At that point, we’re kind of trying to crawl back in and hang around.”
All four of the Pirates touchdowns came in the rushing game. Joshua Gremaud ran the ball into the end zone four times, and had a total of 178 yards on 27 carries.
Roth said he doesn’t believe the final score fully reflects the way the team stuck around and kept the score close for most of the game with the now 9-1 Indians.
“Going into the fourth quarter, we were only down by six points,” he said. “Destyn Morgan had a blocked extra point, which was really huge for us at the time. It felt like that could be a deciding factor in the game at some point. We just weren’t able to stop them in their offense late in the game. We’re down by three scores and at that point in the fourth quarter down by three scores you feel like you got to make a big play. You got to throw the ball and push the ball down the field, try to get back in the game, and we ended up throwing a couple of interceptions in the 4th quarter.”
Gremaud led the team in receiving as well in the game, with 115 yards on 5 carries.
The 5-6 record for the Pirates in 2026 was a step down last year, in which the Pirates won 7 and also made it to the second round of the state tournament.
“It’s definitely been a challenging year after the kind of success that we’ve had two years prior,” Roth said. Losing early on in DeSoto and then to St. Vincent and Jefferson, and then you lose to Herkey and Potosi. Those are all games that, going in, we thought we could win. With our youth and with some of our injuries late in the year we just weren’t able to do that. So I’m just proud of the players that were still here and still giving effort.I think we played our best two games in the playoffs, which is how you want it to be.”
A bright spot for the Pirates is that they are still developing young players, who Roth said are all committed and eager to get ready to come back better next year.
“To take all the injuries and to have as many sophomores that we had playing this year and to still develop and get better each game and play your best football and go toe-to-toe with an 8-1 team in your district, pretty proud and excited for the future,” Roth said. “I’ve already had guys hit me up wondering when we’re going to start offseason weights and everything like that. We just have to take a few weeks to kind of regroup and get reset for next year. But we are definitely excited, we’ve got to hit the weight room hard. We got to get stronger as a program. But we definitely have the guys coming back to be really successful next year, so we just got to put in a good off season.”
