For Tri-Valley, the game on Friday, October 18th, at Jack Anderson Stadium, seemed to be well within grasp as well as a ninth coveted MVL championship title, but in the last minutes of the game John Glenn went from tying the game to winning with a field goal that left the Scotties no time to recover.
Tri-Valley was riding a pretty big high after back to back big conference road wins in the past two weeks against New Lexington (73 – 24) and Sheridan (38 – 21), but that didn’t mean they were sitting back. The Scotties were ready to fight against John-Glenn, the only MVL rival that beat them in the previous season, so they didn’t expect an easy win.
The Lil’ Muskies made their presence known in the first quarter with a drive that resulted in a short-yard touchdown and the only score of the first quarter setting John Glenn in the lead 7 – 0.
Tri-Valley came to life in the second quarter starting off in the first two minutes with a tying 5-yard touchdown by #22 Blake Sands and the game was evened out at 7 – 7. The Muskies had the ball back briefly but then had to turn it back to the Scotties. The Dawgs starting out at their own 8 yard line had to fight for mostly single digit gains all the way up the field before getting a much deserved 2-yard touchdown by #6 Quarterback Aidan Fritter with help from the extra point team lead by #46 Kaden Bay to push the Scotties ahead 14 – 7 where they would stay until halftime although in the final seconds of the first half the Muskies had managed to push the ball all the way back to the Tri-Valley 9 yard line making the Dawgs sweat it out to the last second.
The second half of the game started off with a very dominating Scottie offense pushing their way down field again a little at a time but none-the-less effective as #22 Blake Sands puts in a 2-yard touchdown topped by the PAT by Bay to jump the Scottie lead up to 21 – 7 with 7 minutes left in the quarter. But the Muskies were not asleep and as soon as they got the ball back for the third quarter they made their own full field push back to the end zone and they too got a 2-yard touchdown and narrowed the gap by TV 21 – JG 14.
The Scotties were holding down the Muskies in the 4th all the way until the last four minutes of the game. With 3:44 left John Glenn completed a touchdown pass and extra point to tie the game at 21. It looked like overtime was in the future for the game and the Scotties were pushing hard to make that not a possibility but unfortunately John Glenn intercepted a pass intended for #5 Keaton Williams. With a little over 2 minutes left the Scotties were fighting with all they had to keep the Muskies from advancing, and it looked like it was going work, but with only 26 seconds left on the clock, John Glenn came out of a time-out to line up for a field goal attempt. The field goal was good and the Muskies were up for the first time since the first quarter 24 – 21.
The 26 seconds that were left for the Scotties was just not enough to manage a good offensive push and the Scotties lost to the Muskies 24 – 21. Only time will tell what this means for the MVL as well as any playoff hopes for the Scotties, but they fought as hard as they could.
