On Oct. 28, the #9 Millard West Wildcats varsity football team took on the #8 ranked Lincoln Southwest Silverhawks at Seacrest Field in a rematch from earlier in the season. This was the first round of playoffs for both teams.

The game began with a return by the Wildcats to the 33 yard line. Junior Brody Peterson and junior Jackson Williams had some short runs but on the drive the team mostly lost yards. After a couple penalties on both sides of the ball senior Sean Murphy was forced to punt. Southwest took over on the 30 yard line and had a few short runs before they too were forced to punt the ball. After West regains possession of the ball senior Peyton Strong helps the Cats get into a position to score with some amazing runs. Peterson completes a 5 yard pass to senior Korey Cozad and Murphy puts the extra point up to have West lead the Hawks 7-0 ending out the first quarter. 

“Coming into the game we knew that we knew that we had to find ways to get the ball to our playmakers and stop them on defense,” said junior Jon Ferguson. “We were confident though as we had beaten them earlier in the season even though we didn’t play great.”

The second quarter starts with the Hawks but is quickly turned around. Senior Brady Brau intercepts the ball from Lincoln and gets the ball back in the hands of Millard West. Williams and Strong had some solid runs on this drive but could not get in the back of the endzone. Murphy is forced to punt and gets the ball to the Hawks 7 yard line. Lincoln Southwest gets some very helpful runs and then gets into the endzone on a 60 yard pass to tie the game at 7-7. After West regains possession junior Bobby Joseph has some clutch runs but Peterson throws an interception to the defense. The Hawks regain possession and get a field goal to go up 10-7 going into halftime. 

“At halftime, we talked about how this was not the first time we had been in this situation before,” said Williams. “Our defense played well for the most part but we had a lot of mistakes on offense, like how we got in the red zone 5 times and only scored 1 of the 5 times.”

The third started with a touchback from Murphy. West played fantastic defense forcing the Hawks to punt. The cats stay on the ground and Murphy puts one through the uprights to tie the game 10-10. Lincoln Southwest takes over and has some short runs. They then completed another 60 yard pass to go up 17-10. West has the ball and has some short runs from Peterson and Strong. The Cats went for it on 4 and 1 but weren’t able to get the first down. The Silverhawks had a few short runs to end the third quarter.

Five seconds into the final quarter the Hawks get into the endzone on a 3 yard run to extend their lead to 24-10. Freshman Will Anderson came into the game but couldn’t capitalize on a long pass. The Wildcats go for another fourth down but once again can’t get past the marker. Southwest takes back over and with some short decent runs get good field position. They ran the ball in for 18 yards to extend their lead even more, putting them up 31-10. On the following kickoff Brau returns the kick for 90 yards to chip away at the lead. The game would stay at 31-17 until the final seconds where Lincoln Southwest would take a knee to put the game away. 

“Our senior class re-established how we do things,” said head coach Kirk Peterson. “It wasn’t by any means perfect along the way but it was a major improvement over the last two years and the returning players can learn a lot from them.”

Lincoln Southwest would advance to the next round of playoffs but Millard West’s season would end there. At the end of the season West went 6-4 overall and 5-0 in district games. The Wildcats can’t wait for next season and hope to improve even more next year.