By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Thursday night was quite the debut for Lockwood in the school’s first official 8-man football game.
The Tigers made a defensive stop at the 5-yard line and then sophomore running back Nash McGuire broke free for a 25-yard touchdown run as Lockwood won 54-46 in overtime against visiting Jasper.
“Oh man, crazy,” Lockwood coach Clay Lasater said afterward. “We knew it was going to be a battle, just watching on film. They’re a big, physical team and we felt like we were going to have to really execute well to play with their physicality. At times it felt like they were starting to wear us down there in the second half and I was kind of concerned but our kids just kept slugging away. Super proud of them.”
The Tigers led by as many as 16 points in the first half, trailed entering the fourth quarter and tied the game at 46 with 9:46 remaining in regulation. Quarterback Eli Kerr, a junior, ran for four touchdowns and three two-point conversions and added a 32-yard touchdown pass to McGuire and a conversion pass to junior tight end Kamon Cooper.
Jasper tied the game at 40 late in the third quarter after junior Collin Furr recovered a fumbled snap at the 10-yard line. Senior Xander Metcalf scored on the next play and MItchell Avalos added the two-point conversion.
Then Lockwood fumbled on the first play of its next possession, giving the Eagles possession at the 33. Metcalf scored from the 31 to make it 46-40 Jasper.
The Tigers answered with a 12-play drive that included a fourth-down conversion at the Jasper 23. A holding penalty made it first-and-22 but Cooper hauled in a 23-yard reception and Kerr scored from the 11 to tie it up. A pass attempt on the two-point try for the lead fell incomplete.
Lockwood later drove to the Jasper 31 with only a few minutes remaining but couldn’t move the chains on a fourth-and-8 play. That gave the Eagles the ball at their own 31 with 3:14 remaining. They converted on a fourth down and moved across midfield but an illegal procedure penalty and a snap over the head of quarterback Clayton Anderson stalled the drive and a fourth down pass as time expired was incomplete.
“You could just tell we were gassed, they were gassed,” Lasater said. “You were just hoping you could hit a crease somewhere and spring somebody. We just couldn’t quite get it. Luckily we came back and made a defensive stop when we needed it and were able to go into overtime.”
Jasper’s self-inflicted wounds continued to hurt the Eagles in overtime. They got the ball first but quickly lost yardage on a penalty. A personal foul on the Tigers helped out and gave Jasper first-and-goal from the 8, but a holding call moved the ball back to the 20 and Metcalf was stopped at the 5 on fourth down.
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McGuire got loose on an option play the very next down and broke several tackles on his way to the end zone for the win.
“Eli Kerr, Nash McGuire, Landon Stump, those three guys just kept gutting and gutting,” Lasater said. “They were warriors. They’re playing both sides of the ball the whole time and running plays in and out. I’d be curious how many yards they ran just running plays in and out on offense and defense. I really feel like our line – they were big, they were physical, but our line kept battling and executing and that was what I felt eventually got us some opportunities later.”
Jasper opened up a 12-6 lead early before Stump’s 1-yard run and Kerr’s conversion run made it 14-12. Kerr added a leaping interception at the goal line on Jasper’s next possession to keep the Eagles from scoring and that led to McGuire’s 32-yard touchdown reception and Cooper’s conversion catch to make it 22-12.
Senior Blane Berlekamp recovered a Jasper fumble after that and Lockwood scored three plays later to take a 28-12 lead with 9:05 left in the first half. But Jasper quickly answered with a 70-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Avalos.
Lockwood still held onto a lead, 34-26, at halftime.
“When you go back and look at film and even during the game you realize there’s turnovers, there’s momentum swings, a lot of things can happen during a game that can really affect the final outcome,” Jasper coach Mark McFarland said. “It’s never really just one play. Their kids did a great job responding every time we started to come back. We pulled even and the kids fought great coming back in the second half. I’m really proud of them for that. We put ourselves in a position to win the ballgame a couple times in the second half and just seemed like we kept shooting ourselves in the foot and that’s the way it goes some nights.
“Give Lockwood credit, they kept coming back and our kids kept coming back,” he said. “It was quite a battle. I think we can learn from these kind of games. You fix the mistakes, you fix the turnovers and you line up and play the next game.”
“I felt like when we got that lead early we just needed like one more stop, one more play to maybe try to put it away and they just kept coming back and they would make a big play, got the kickoff return,” Lasater said. “I felt like that was a big momentum changer when we had the lead and they returned the kickoff. It just felt like we were really close to putting it away in the first half and in the second half it felt like the momentum switched and they were rolling a little bit and we were on our heels.”
Jasper’s Avalos scored twice, on the kick return and a 23-yard run. Anderson had a 5-yard touchdown run. Metcalf scored four times, on runs of 27, 15, 10 and 31 yards.
Stump had a 1-yard touchdown for Lockwood, sophomore Hank Eggerman stripped the ball away from Jasper and returned it for a touchdown and McGuire had the 25-yard touchdown to win it.
“This is a game where when you have to go battle like that there’s a lot of things you learn going through that adversity and battling and finally finishing on top,” Lasater said. “We’ve got a young team. Most of our guys have not played much varsity football and this is a huge learning experience for those guys.”
