During a weather-delay of almost an hour-and-a-half, fans coming-and-going from the stadium in Republic could see the 5th ranked Class 5 team in the state, Nixa, crammed into a small locker room next to the concession stand anxiously awaiting a chance to get going against the Tigers.
And when the home underdogs came out of the gate after that long wait with a quick touchdown drive (sparked by a 56-yard quarterback keeper by Riley Watkins and a five-yard TD plunge by Jake Jones, the younger brother of former stand-out Jerney Jones who’s now at Mizzou), it looked like the state-ranked Eagles might have gotten stale after sitting in solitary confinement for so long.
“It didn’t affect us at all,” laughed Nixa quarterback Andrew Rivera after the game. “It actually may have helped us. We just got to sit there and come together as a team. We didn’t do anything crazy. We just took our pads off, relaxed, and when we came out we were ready to go like nothing had happened.”
Proof of that came with the way Nixa responded after falling behind 6-0 (Republic failing on the extra-point). The Eagles, who had 250-yards in total offense on the night with all but 65 of that on-the-ground, put together a grind-it-out 13-play drive with running back Nicos Oropeza going the final four-yeards for a 7-6 lead that Nixa would never give up. Oropeza, one of the area’s top backs who ran for over 1,600-yards last season, had 100-yards on 25 carries against Republic.
The Nixa defense, while allowing 202 total yards, didn’t allow another point for the rest of the game. And the Eagle special teams came up with the play-of-the-game early in the second quarter when a host of Nixa players blocked a Tiger punt inside the Republic 20-yard-line, leaving the Nixa offense with a short trip for its second touchdown on a quarterback keeper by Rivera to go ahead 14-6.
Right before the half Nixa kicker Sean Sample would add a 47-yard field goal to increase the advantage to 17-6.
“We had a couple of key special team plays tonight,” Nixa head coach Rich Rehagen said. “That blocked punt and the field goal right before the end of the half were both keys for us.”
“They stepped up big,” Rivera added in complimenting the special teams play. “We’ve had a lot of times when our offense is going good and our defense is lacking and we’ve had a lot of times where our defense is going hard and our offense might be a little slow. But tonight I felt like everything really clicked. Our special teams stepped up and we all played as a team.”
Rivera added his second touchdown run in the fourth quarter for the final 24-6 Nixa margin of victory that was definitely a line-of-scrimmage win with both the offensive and defensive fronts dominating the game.
“At Week 4 we’ve done some improving and we’ve still got some to do,” Rehagen said. "But we looked good up front on both sides of the ball. I like what we’ve done so far.”
“We lost a couple of really good guys (from last year on the offensive line) but we have some veterans back too,” Rivera said. “The new guys have come in and stepped up and the veterans are playing like veterans. They play so hard. I see them in the huddle and they look tired, sweating, beat-up. But they go back-out on the line and do it again. It’s really great to see on every single play.”
Two years removed from a trip to the Class 5 state championship game where it fell to Battle, Nixa was 7-6 last season but won the district title over Republic before losing in the state quarterfinals.
This season, the Eagles are off to a 4-0 start with wins over Willard, Branson, Springfield Central, and Republic. But with upcoming games against Neosho and Webb City, the Eagles are about to face some of their biggest tests of the season to see how really good they are.
“In our conference (COC-Large) there’s some really good teams and we’ve got ‘em lined-up all-in-a-row for us,” Rehagen laughed.
"I think we’re as good as we wanna be,” Rivera said. “We come out and play like this every single night, it’s limitless. “
