SENECA, Mo. — With just under 10 minutes left to play, Seneca needed a touchdown to tie the game.
But after a punt that netted just 15 yards, Mexico was set up at its own 42-yard line, looking to extend its 14-7 lead and potentially put the game away.
One play later, Seneca got the gift it needed.
On second-and-1, the Bulldogs called a pitch play to the right for senior running back Michael White, who two drives previous had caught a pass at the hash marks around midfield and darted around multiple defenders for the go-ahead score, a 60-yard touchdown reception.
This time, though, the toss from quarterback Ty Sims came in just above White’s left shoulder. The ball went through his hands and into the backfield, where a Seneca defender fell on it.
“I felt like the momentum swung right there,” Seneca coach Cody Hilburn said. “I told the kids already when we were down 14-7 that we’d get that big stop, we’re going down and scoring, we’re gonna go for two and go win the football game. And that was our mindset. Our kids knew it.”
Unfortunately for Seneca, the momentum swing was short-lived.
On just the second play of the drive that started at the Mexico 46 and could have tied the Class 3 MSHSAA state quarterfinal game, the ball once again hit the ground.
This time it was Seneca quarterback senior Ethan Fritchey who was stripped of the ball, and a Bulldogs defender whose arms it wound up in.
Somewhat poetically, it was White who found the end zone 10 plays later, redeeming himself after the turnover, and sealing a 20-7 Mexico win at Tom Hodge Field.
After the game, Hilburn told of his team’s Nov. 5 playoff win against Aurora, in which Seneca came back from a 12-0 deficit to win 13-12, as an example of Seneca’s confidence late in games.
“You couldn’t have ever imagined that in our locker room, you’d have thought we were up 12-0,” he said of the win at Aurora. “That’s just our mentality, we were going to find a way to win in the fourth quarter, that’s just kind of been who we are. (Tonight), we had to trade blows with some people that may have been more talented than us early on, and we knew if we got the game to the fourth quarter, our kids believed we could win. And we believed to the very end that we were going to win the game and it just didn’t go our way.”
The loss ends Hilburn’s first season at the helm of Seneca’s program at 8-5, a significant turnaround after a 3-7 2020 season.
Hilburn spoke of a desire to reestablish Seneca as a perennial power and credited the first team he led as head coach of the program for taking a first step toward that goal.
“I’ve never seen a group like this that wanted to win so much and would literally do anything for you,” he said. “You didn’t have to beg them to show up and work hard, they wanted to show up and work hard. They wanted to have an identity, they wanted to leave a legacy for themselves and they did. They won our first district championship in the last eight years at Seneca (2013), and Seneca has historically been a rich-tradition football program and that’s what we’re trying to get back to. And probably early on (this season), I wouldn’t have dreamed of us getting to this point, too. I wanted them to set a bar for us that next year we can shoot to achieve and they just wouldn’t ever settle for that being the case. They’re heartbroken tonight, they fully expected, I fully expected, we all did, that we’d come out and win this game tonight.”
Seneca’s lone score came on a 4-yard run by Jackson Marrs with 6:34 left in the second quarter.
In a game in which both teams were penalized several times, Seneca was called for costly infractions on both sides of the ball.
On offense, holding and illegal procedure were called three times each, setting up long yardage situations that forced the run-dependent attack to try and pick up gains through the air.
On defense, Seneca fell victim to a defensive pass interference call inside its own 10-yard line.
Mexico had set itself up with a first-and-10 from the 15, but consecutive illegal procedure calls made it first-and-20 from the 25, prompting the shot toward the end zone on which the flag was drawn. On the very next play, Andrew Runge punched through the defense for a 13-yard score, to tie the game at 7-7.
“It was frustrating,” Hilburn said. “That’s part of the game, you know. It’s part of the game.”
Mexico (10-2) will travel to St. Mary’s (10-1) in the semifinals.
