Perryville boys soccer coach Jerry Fulton didn’t have much to complain about after the Pirates (16- 5) wrapped up their 2025 season last month.
Led by a solid corps of 10 seniors, the Pirates achieved most of their goals for the season, claiming their fourth consecutive Jefferson County Athletic Association conference title, winning the Class 2, District 1 championship, and finishing third in the Class 2 state finals on Nov. 22.
“Of course, we’d like to be in the first-place game, but when you lose the semifinal, it’s going to put you in the third-place game,” Fulton said. “The guys accepted that. They came out, and they played the next one — the third-place game — and were able to pull that out. As far as the season. I mean, I don’t know how you could be unhappy. We set goals at the beginning of the season to win the conference. We won the conference. We never gave up a goal in conference play. Then our goal was to get the No. 1 seed in districts and win districts. Well, we accomplished that too, so then we set the goal that we would like to make it to state and, doggone it, if we didn’t accomplish that one, too.”
After finishing the regular season, district playoffs and the state quarterfinal round on such a high note, the Pirates had a bit of bad luck in the semifinal round, falling to eventual second-place finisher Principia 3-2.
Fulton said his seniors — particularly his team captains — were instrumental in helping the team recover and reset in time for the third-place game, a 5-1 victory over Harrisonville.
“Those guys were huge,” Fulton said. “For the next couple of hours or three after we lost the semifinal, everybody was kind of in disarray — ‘Oh, my God. Now what?' It took a few, took some thinking and stuff like that to realize that, ‘Hey, we’re not done. We’re not going to get to the first-place game, but we can easily take this last game and walk out of here on a win.'”
Both Principia and Class 2 state champion Springfield Catholic are private schools, leaving the Pirates as the top public school team in their division.
“We kind of spun it that way for them,” Fulton said. “‘Hey guys, we may not be able to win it, but we can still go out as the best public school in the state in Class 2.’ The seniors took that and ran with it, the rest of the guys jumped on board and followed, and we were able to get that done.”
Perryville’s seniors proved to be a huge part of the Pirates’ success. Treyton Barnett finished the season as the JCAA’s top scorer and ranked third in the St. Louis region with 32 goals and 16 assists for a whopping 80 points. Classmate Kade Baudendistel was sixth on the conference list, finishing with 9 goals and 9 assists for 27 points.
In goal, senior starter Waylon Huber (14-5) finished as the conference’s top keeper, racking up 126 saves in 1,431 minutes while giving up 20 goals for an average of 1.12 per game, including 8 shutouts, 7 of them solo.
The stat book, while the most obvious, was not the only measure of success for Fulton’s senior class.
“There was a huge contribution from the senior class,” Fulton said. “I mean, look at the last game where Bryan Bohnert — who was not a starter on the team all year — steps up and fills a spot and, oh, my God, had his best game of the year.”
Bohnert found himself in the starting lineup after fellow senior Dexter Strattman rolled an ankle in a previous game.
“Treyton was huge this year,” Fulton said. “He had a total of 80 points on the season — that’s pretty impressive. And Kade Baudendistel in the back — he played outstanding all year and was a great leader. Even in the semifinal game, Waylon made save after save to keep us in that thing as long as he could. No goalie’s going to stop somebody when they’re point blank, but he did a wonderful job. All the seniors did — Vincent Schaaf, he was solid all year. Karsten Schilli was solid all year.”
Fulton acknowledged that replacing those seniors — a lineup that also includes Lucas Wright, Aiden Wendel and Jace Oster — won’t be easy, but said he’s not too worried, even though the 2025 team only included four juniors.
“Dez Hampson, who’s a junior, started up top and was the second-leading goal scorer on the team,” Fulton said. “Then there’s our sophomore who started all year in the midfield, Ethan Pohlman. I mean, my God, what can you say about that kid being a sophomore and starting every game in the midfield?”
Hampson was not only the team’s second-leading goal scorer, he was also fourth in the conference, finishing with 19 goals and 3 assists for a total of 41 points. Pohlman finished with 6 goals and 12 assists for 24 points, putting him just behind Baudendistel and Schilli, who finished with 27 points each.
“I’ve been through this thing several times,” said Fulton, who’s been coaching the Pirates for 18 seasons, “and last year when we only had two seniors and couldn’t get through, I just had a feeling, ‘Boy, this next year’s our year.’ In the history of the program, it seemed like every time we didn’t have very many seniors, but we had a lot of juniors, bam, next year we’ve gone to state. That happened in 2014, 2015, and 2021 was the same thing. In the history of the program, when we have a year when we’re loaded up with juniors and not many seniors, it seems like the next year was the year.”
As for the future, Fulton wasn’t shy.
“I would hate to say that this is the last time Perryville boys go to state,” Fulton said. “I don’t believe that. I mean, we didn’t go to the state finals until 2014, which was eleven years ago. Since that time, we’ve been there four times.”
The Pirates won a state championship in 2014, finished second in 2015 and 2021, and now third in 2025.
Fulton, who emphasized the Pirates’ success this season was a total team effort, also wanted to thank those who never stepped on the pitch.
“I’d just like to thank everybody that supported us,” Fulton said. “The city of Perryville is an awesome place to play, and the fans here are great fans. I mean, we had support from everybody you could think of and just like to thank the whole town and everybody for the support they showed.”
