Indians rally past Pirates, 29-25

Build as big a lead as possible in a game’s first quarter, opening half, three quarters, whatever the case may be - if the early advantage doesn’t eventually result in a win the outcome is often heartbreaking. St. Vincent High School rallied from a 19-point halftime deficit and found a way to hold off a late Perryville comeback attempt in falling 29-25 at home Friday, Sept. 13.

“It’s really hard,” PHS coach Brent Roth said after the game. “We came into this game and knew it was going to take four quarters. We talked about it all week. There’s a chance we can get up, and that we had to keep playing, or maybe they were going to get up, and we had to keep playing. Last year, they got up on us early and shut down and quit. I don’t know…our guys played really hard, it’s a hard one to swallow.”

Perryville High School’s varsity team led 7-0 after the first quarter, 19-0 at halftime, 19-14 after three quarters, and even was in front 25-22 with 1:40 remaining with a fresh set of downs. However, a late fumble from quarterback Kayd Luckey and a go-ahead touchdown reception on the very next play from St. Vincent senior John Schwartz were too much for the Pirates to overcome in the home defeat to its crosstown rival.

“We had a good run, it was like a six, seven-yard run, all we had to do was get one first down, the game was over, the kid made a good play, forced a fumble,” Roth said.

Perryville piled up 149 rushing yards in the first two quarters, forced two St. Vincent punts, had an interception, and got the Indians’ offense off the field with a turnover on downs with 41.3 seconds left in the second quarter. The positive moments that were so frequent in the opening half were few and far between for the Pirates later in the game.

“Mistakes that we made on our own, not being able to capitalize on drives where we moved the ball down and had good opportunities, you know, and just defensively a couple of missed assignments, but at halftime I challenged them and told them, ‘We’ve been here before,’ it’s all about adversity and how you respond, and we responded,” Schumer said.

After the Indians’ go-ahead late in the fourth quarter, the Pirates made a final push to get a game-winning TD drive.

Trailing 29-25 with 1:22 left and no timeouts - they were used during the Indians’ drive that resulted in a turnover of downs with 1:40 left on an incompletion - PHS drove more than 60 yards into the St. Vincent red zone, and with 14.9 seconds left Luckey, who rushed out of the pocket to the right, was unable to get out of bounds. Perryville quickly lined and snapped the ball with 0.3 ticks left but was called for a false start. The Pirates were unable to get another snap off after the official started the clock.

“Any time there is a penalty on the offense, it starts as soon as the ref starts it,” Schumer said. “It doesn’t matter, it’s an advantage to them.”

“We had 0.3 seconds, for whatever reason, we didn’t quite understand what was going on, we didn’t get the snap off,” Roth said.

Both teams started slow, punting on their initial possessions.

“It was a slow start,” Schwartz said. “The weather out here did not help our offense that we usually run. We adjusted to it at halftime, found out what their offense was, stopped them put up a lot of points on the board, and came out with a win.”

Perryville won the toss and elected to receive the opening kickoff. Three quick penalties on the offense were too much to overcome - including a false start on a long pass play which would have set up a first-and-goal situation inside the Indians’ 10 - led to a fourth-and-5. A 22-yard punt game it to St. Vincent, but the Indians started going backward. A fumble by quarterback Nick Buchheit was eventually recovered by led to a fourth-and-19. A bad snap over the punter’s head resulted in a 30-yard switch in field position, giving PHS first-and-10 at the Indians’ 28. Five plays later, all runs by Barrett Wheeler, and the Pirates took a 7-0 lead with 5:25 to go in the first quarter.

The Indians began on their own 20 and used a couple of offsides infractions on Perryville to set up two first-and-5 situations. The first one was converted, giving St. Vincent its first first down of the game but the second time consecutive incompletions prompted another punt, this time on fourth-and-5.

The Pirates, starting from their own 33, responded with an 11-play, 67-yard drive that resulted in a TD run by Luckey on fourth-and-goal. The point-after was no good, leaving Perryville in front 13-0 with 11:01 remaining in the second quarter.

St. Vincent appeared to get into the scoring column on its next possession, driving to the PHS 22 but an interception by Evan Hayden deep in PHS territory preserved the shutout and kept it 13-0. A five-play, 82-yard scoring drive made it 19-0. Luckey began with a 31-yard rush then found Chase Richardet for a 49-yard TD with 3:34 left in the half.

In its opening possession of the third quarter, the Indians used a 10-play drive to get to the PHS one. However, a sack by Dominic Seiler backed up St. Vincent to the five and a pass fell incomplete on fourth-and-goal.

St. Vincent finally got on the scoreboard on a 44-yard TD reception from Nick Buchheit with 6:12 left in the third quarter. After forcing a Pirate punt, the Indians found the end zone again, this time it was a reception from John Schwartz on first-and-10 from the Pirate 16. The Indians again forced a PHS punt early in the fourth quarter. This time, a quick strike offense gave St. Vincent its first lead. Buchheit found Jack Seabaugh for a 55-yard touchdown pass. The extra point put the Indians up 22-19.

PHS took advantage of a fumble by Seabaugh later in the fourth quarter, driving 81 yards in 11 plays, going ahead 25-22 on a TD run by Wheeler with 3:43 remaining. That lead would prove to not hold up as St. Vincent scored with 1:28 remaining on a 34-yard reception by Schwartz.

The Indians’ defense was ready just in case there was a final throw toward the end zone in the closing seconds, Schwartz said.

“We would’ve done everything there is to make that play not happen,” Schwartz said.

After the game, Schumer was pleased his squad found a way to get the plays it needed to earn the road win.

“Let players make plays and we made enough of them, we made enough of them to get a stop and I’ve just so proud of all of them,” Schumer said.

Schwartz said going forward St. Vincent has to find a way to start faster.

“We kind of underestimated them, they were definitely a lot better this year, and we need to come out a lot more fired up.”

Despite the loss, Roth was proud of his squad for the fight they showed in Friday’s contest.

“We weren’t really expected to do this tonight, a lot of people were not giving us a shot so the fact that we were in there, had our opportunities, our guys played a great game, they played really hard both sides of the ball, just kind of fell apart there at the end,” Roth said.