The Wright City football team showed flashes of brilliance in its district semifinal at Borgia Friday; the host Knights, however, offered up a blinding display of offensive excellence.
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The Wright City football team showed flashes of brilliance in its district semifinal at Borgia Friday; the host Knights, however, offered up a blinding display of offensive excellence.
Class 3 District 3 top-seed Borgia rolled to the 45-14 home win in Washington.
Senior lineman Karsten Uhl said that seeing his brothers give it their all until the bitter end in a decidedly one-sided affair is something he will carry with him going forward.
“The amount of adversity this team has been through is shocking,” Uhl said. “Be we were able to (find strength in each other) so we could make positive things happen. The camaraderie that we share is truly something special.”
Down 6-0 and defending a fourth down deep inside its own territory early, Wright City managed to stuff the Borgia runner to earn a turnover on downs.
After a pair of Borgia touchdowns expanded the lead to three scores, Wright City (7-4) managed to get one back as senior quarterback Dayton Humphreys found sophomore Kaveon Schulte on a 72-yard touchdown strike down the right sideline with 54 seconds left in the opening quarter to make the score 21-6.
“I felt like the touchdown brought our team up,” Schulte said. “We were (psychologically) down at that point, so it really helped bring us up. I’m glad I caught that to raise our spirits.”
On the Wildcats’ final drive of the half, Humphreys found Turner for a completion of 29 yards to the Borgia 32. A fourth-down pass for junior TJ Hamel fell short in the end zone to end the drive, however.
Coach Tyler Rickard lauded the Wildcats for showing the flashes of brilliance the team did in the face of some pretty overwhelming odds.
“We had two great first-half drives but we couldn’t quite get the last one in,” Rickard said. “The defense also had spurts where they looked really good.”
Senior defensive back Terrance Love produced an interception on the final play of the first half.
Even though the flashes were nice, the unrelenting attack from Borgia (6-4) proved too much.
A pair of scoring runs by senior Aiden Crooks of seven and 39 yards and scoring passes by senior Lane Mallinckrodt to senior Maxwell Borgerding and senior Henry Zaitzmann, combined with a field goal by senior Johnathan Williams, helped Borgia build the 31-6 halftime lead.
Crooks added a 21-yard run, his third of the game, to make it 38-6 early in the third before Borgerding added a pick-six to make it 45-6 to start the running clock before a handful of points with the game out of hand.
It would be the Wildcats who found the end zone last, though, as senior Ben Gomez caught an 11-yard touchdown pass from Humphreys with 59 seconds to play.
“It felt good to keep putting up effort, no matter the score,” Gomez said. “That’s the thing, when we’re united as a family, the score doesn’t matter.”
