After St. Vincent High School overcame a 19-point halftime deficit in its Sept. 13th game against the Pirates and staved off a late comeback attempt by Perryville High School, the Indians walked away with a 29-25 win without having a home-field advantage, and PHS coach Brent Roth was none too happy with the results.
“It’s painful,” he said after the game. “You know, it hurts when you feel like you did everything you could have done to win the game — especially when you feel you outplayed the other team — which I think we did. Then there’s the crosstown rivalry and just everything put together. You go out and play a good game, and then it slips out of your fingers right at the end. Man, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve dealt with as a coach, getting over this.”
Roth’s disappointment with the final score is understandable, with the Pirates leading 7-0 after the first quarter, 19-0 at halftime, 19-14 after the third quarter, and then topping the Indians 25-22 with only 1:40 remaining in the game. It was a late fumble by quarterback Kayd Luckey and a touchdown reception on the next play by St. Vincent’s John Schwartz that led to Perryville’s first loss for the season at the hands of the Indians.
Perryville’s stats were impressive, with the team making 149 rushing yards in the first two quarters, forcing two St. Vincent punts, making an interception, and getting the Indians’ offense off the field with a turnover on downs with a little over 40 seconds left in the second quarter. Despite all that, however, the Pirates’ efforts were not enough to come out on top.
With the Indians moving ahead in the fourth, the Pirates made one last push for a touchdown, but trailing St. Vincent 29-25, with 1:22 remaining in the game and no timeouts left, PHS made a 60-yard drive into the Indian’s red zone. Luckey, with just 14.9 seconds left in the game, rushed to the right but was unable to get out of bounds. Perryville lined up quickly and snapped the ball but was called for a false start, and the team couldn’t get off another snap after the start of the clock.
Highlighting some of his top players in Friday’s game, Roth said, “Barrett Wheeler ran the ball hard again. He had 132 yards, two touchdowns and was running people over. The whole line performed well again, like they have been all year. Kayd Luckey played an excellent game as well, putting everybody in the right positions. And then Chase Richardet, as a receiver, was pretty much unstoppable.
“He had 146 yards on six receptions and a touchdown. Drew Luckey, basically our sixth lineman up there, was running people over in the run game as well. The offense performed well. We had, I think, about 400 yards of offense, and the defense did its thing. Gavin Hemmann played a heck of a game with his coverage in the secondary, and the whole secondary did a decent job.”
Evaluating the Pirates’ loss to the Indians, Roth said, “With a team like St. Vincent, as much as they throw the ball, you're gonna get beat every once in a while, but we managed to keep them in front of us for the most part. Even the plays we got beat on, we had good coverage. They just made good catches.
“That's the frustrating thing — I think we played a really good game, and I think we played better than St. Vincent as a whole. Unfortunately, we still end up with the L. I always tell the kids to put this behind you and move on, but I don't think I wanna do that. I think I wanna remember how this feels and be pi**ed off the rest of the year.”
This Friday, the Pirates head to Bayless High School in St. Louis to play the Broncos, and coach Roth isn’t shy about what he expects of his team for the remainder of the season.
“We need to be angry the rest of the year,” Roth said. “Unfortunately, everyone else on our schedule is gonna have to with an angry Pirates team.”
Indians coach Tim Schumer described Friday’s game as a rollercoaster.
“There was a lot of emotions and highs and lows with momentum,” he said. “And then the last four or five minutes of the game amplified it times 10, just with the changes of possessions, the scores and how everything was going down.”
While he thought his entire team played hard, Schumer recognized one of his players for the effort he put out on the field Friday night.
“I think Jack Seabaugh came in and stepped up,” he said. “Wyatt Winkler got injured the week before, and Jack stepped in there on defense. I thought he did a really good job. He had some key stops on defense. He got in on offense as well and had a 55-yard touchdown to put us up early in the fourth quarter. I thought he stepped up when his number was called and delivered for us. But the whole team did a fantastic job, aside from the first half. We didn’t perform up to our standard. Then, coming out in the second half and playing the way we did made a big statement.”
The Indians will be facing the Herculaneum Black Cats at home Friday night.
“We get to play at home again after being on the road for two weeks,” Schumer said. “It’ll be nice to get in more of a normal routine of playing at home. Herculaneum is another conference opponent, and they’re always a very tough and very well-coached team. We’re gonna have to get back to work this week in practice and can’t let the hangover of this big win carry over into next Friday. We need to fix our mistakes, get a couple of good days of practice in and then be ready to go this Friday.”
