College Heights Christian held the lead at halftime, but Liberal used a strong fourth quarter to earn a 54-38 win over the Cougars on Friday night in an 8-man football contest.
College Heights was up 38-32 at halftime, but after neither team scored in the third period, the Bulldogs put up 22 unanswered points in the fourth quarter.
“We played the best quarter and a half that we’ve played all year,” College Heights coach Travis Burk said on Saturday morning. “We had a real good first half. And we played better defense last night. Our effort was good. The kids played hard, but we just fell short.”
The Cougars scored twice in the first quarter — a 6-yard run by Logan Decker and an 11-yard TD pass from Decker to Bo Sitton.
Liberal led 16-14 at the end of the first quarter.
In the second quarter, Decker recorded a 39-yard touchdown run and completed a 6-yard touchdown pass to Caleb Quade, giving the Cougars a 30-24 lead with 6:30 remaining in the first half.
Decker found Quade for a 65-yard strike, and the 2-point conversion gave CHC a 38-24 advantage.
The Bulldogs answered just before the break, cutting College Heights’ lead to 38-32 at intermission.
“We were up 14 in the second quarter, and I felt like if we could have gotten the ball back, we would have had a good chance to go up 21 there,” Burk said. “But they scored right before halftime. They cut our lead to six and they had the momentum coming out of halftime. That was big.”
There was no scoring in the third period.
Liberal scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter, a 4-yard run, a 10-yard run and an 11-yard run, for the final margin.
“Liberal was bigger than us, and we definitely have to get more physical, on both offense and defense,” Burk said. “The teams that block well, run the ball hard and tackle well are the teams that are hard to beat. We didn’t tackle well in the second half and I didn’t think we ran our routes well in the second half either. We got banged up a little bit, too. But we’ll get back at it and we’ll work hard this week in practice.”
A sophomore, Decker completed 13-of-29 passes for 175 yards with three touchdowns and three interceptions. Decker ran 24 times for 215 yards with two touchdowns.
“He had a good game,” Burk said. “I wouldn’t say he was 100 percent last night. He’d been sick for a couple of days…I’m not making excuses. I thought he played really well for how he was feeling.”
Derrick McMillan ran twice for 17 yards.
Quade hauled in six passes for 102 yards with two TD, while Cannon Miller had five receptions for 47 yards and Sitton caught two passes for 26 yards.
Quade was credited with 11 tackles and had an interception, while McMillan made 10 tackles and Levi Durling had nine stops.
College Heights (1-3) hosts Appleton City (2-2) on Friday. Appleton City has wins over Greenfield and Rich Hill and losses to Archie and Drexel.
