CARTHAGE, Mo. — Despite an undefeated regular season, the Carthage Tigers’ 2020 football campaign has come to an end. The Tigers’ normally reliable offense sputtered in a 42-21 defeat by rival Webb City at David Haffner Stadium on Friday night.
The win crowned the Cardinals (10-1) Class 5 District 6 champions, and Carthage (9-1) was left with the runner-up trophy after winning the Missouri Class 5 state championship a year ago.
“You never have words, you don’t prepare anything for something like that,” Carthage coach Jon Guidie said of his postgame message to his players whose seasons, and some their high school careers, have come to an end. “You just want them to know that we’re still proud of them and that we love them and we’re going to be here for them if they need anything. The result tonight, that doesn’t dictate who they are as people or who they’re going to become as people.”
With 2:29 left in the second quarter, Carthage forced the Webb City offense to punt, which would have been the Tigers’ first defensive stop of the game, and a possible turning point. Trailing 21-7, Carthage potentially had a chance to put together a scoring drive and go into the half looking at just a single-score deficit.
Instead, though, the punt was fumbled by the Tigers around midfield, and after several players from each side appeared to scoop up the ball only to lose control, the Cardinals recovered it and set up shop at the Tigers’ 43-yard line. Two plays later, Webb City quarterback Cole Gayman underthrew a pass to Mekhi Garrard down the sideline, but the senior wide receiver read the throw and came back to it, shaking his defender in the process for a 40-yard score.
That touchdown was the second of three unanswered by the Cardinals that stretched the score to 35-7, where it would stay until Carthage’s senior quarterback Patrick Carlton got the Tigers close with his arm, going three-of-five through air for 38 yards on the drive, before scoring on the ground from 5 yards out with 8:04 left in the game.
“It was huge,” Guidie said of the swing the muffed punt had in the game. “It’s been something we worked on all week long, our punt return. We didn’t like where we were at with it. We put two kids back to ensure we were going to field it. We tried to come up and make a play on it, missed it. And then we gave up the big fade for a score there. Not much fun at halftime, but we challenged them to come out and have some pride in themselves, and I thought they came out and battled pretty well in the second half.”
The next of those three consecutive Webb City scoring drives not only put points on the board for the Cardinals, but took valuable time Carthage needed to mount a comeback off the game clock. The Cardinals took the opening kickoff of the second half and burned nearly six minutes on an 11-play, 80-yard drive that culminated in a 39-yard touchdown run by senior running back Devrin Weathers. Weathers finished the night with 152 rushing yards on 19 carries and two touchdowns.
Gayman was efficient through the air, completing four of his seven passes for 103 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Carthage’s Carlton continued his usual production, totaling 249 yards of offense on nine of 20 passes and 26 rushing attempts, but the rest of the Tigers’ attack combined for just 76 total yards.
