The Heat Left Marks: Week 2 in Jefferson County Football

A week ago, this series' first paragraph ended on a warning: this one left marks. Week 2 raised the stakes on the phrase. A heat wave suspended one county game outright and hung over every other kickoff. Festus walked out of St. Mary's with a two-point loss and a wrecked quarterback — the second county passer felled by a broken collarbone in as many weeks. And the scoreboards that survived the weather went haywire: 64 points from one county team, 71 from another. The stories of the week weren't wins and losses. They were heat and hurt, and what each program did in spite of both.

Festus lost the game. Then the news got worse.

The final at St. Mary's says 14-12 — a two-point road loss to one of the city's proudest programs, the kind of scoreline an 0-2 team can usually argue its way around. Festus can't argue around this one: Parker Perry broke his collarbone. The senior quarterback who threw for 331 yards on opening night, who threw for 2,300-plus and 35 touchdowns as a junior, who is the single biggest reason the Tigers entered the season as the county's standard — gone from the lineup in one play.

Two truths live in Festus this week. The panic case: 0-2, no Perry, a Friday trip to a Windsor team averaging 49 a game — and the one result that was supposed to soften Week 1 did the opposite. This series circled Valle Catholic at Rockwood Summit to find out whether Festus had lost to a good team or a great one; Valle ran Summit off its own field 42-7, and the answer makes the home loss read worse, not better. The patience case: an 0-2 built from a four-point loss and a two-point road loss at a proud city program is nothing like an 0-2 built from blowouts. But patience is a hard sell in a town with two straight deep November runs behind it, and the schedule is not offering a soft landing.

Windsor is a bully now

File this away: through two weeks, Windsor has scored 98 points. The Owls won a 64-46 track meet with Lutheran South, and the headline number belongs to Jack Kuda — 14 carries, 285 yards, four touchdowns. Through two games Kuda has 390 rushing yards, seventh in the entire St. Louis metro, with six touchdowns — and here's the part that should worry the rest of the league: he isn't even the same Owl who ran for 306 on opening night. That was Jett Black. Two weeks, two different 200-yard rushers. The program that couldn't buy a win against its league's big schools a year ago now gets that league's flagship — wounded — at home on Friday.

Seckman 71, and it wasn't a typo

The Jaguars put 71 on North Point and scored on their first eight possessions — with a quarterback nobody outside Imperial had circled in August. Brody Kube, the senior who set the school record with 18 touchdown passes a year ago, broke his collarbone in the opening win over Oakville. Junior Cohner Baer, the head coach's son, took the job and has simply not blinked: 9 of 11 for 207 yards and three touchdowns on Friday. Jaxson Jablonski ran for 178 and two scores, Trey Conner added 144 and another, and a team that lost its record-setting starter in Week 1 just posted the county's biggest point total of the season. The injury stings. The response tells you what kind of program this is.

The circled game went exactly one way

Fox at Northwest was the game this series circled a week ago — Fox's seven-headed ground game against a defense that had just taken the ball away six times. It finished 27-7, Northwest, and it finished that way because the Lions erased the very thing that makes Fox Fox: the run. Cohenn Stark did his usual everything — 103 rushing yards and a touchdown on 16 carries, plus a 9-of-15, 200-yard, two-touchdown night through the air — and Jeremiah Clines piled up 15 tackles, giving him 31 through two games. Fox's Ryan Joggerst actually topped him on the night with 16 stops, but a defense can only hold so long when its offense manages seven points. Northwest is 2-0 by a combined 53-20, and the best-team-in-the-county conversation now runs through Cedar Hill.

De Soto didn't turn close into won. It turned close into a rout.

A week ago this series called the Perryville game De Soto's fastest possible chance to turn close into won. The Dragons skipped a step: 54-32, one week after dying at the St. Vincent 10-yard line. One week, seven points; the next, fifty-four. The first winning season since 2010 still requires a lot of Fridays, but a program that spent two years learning how to stay close just found out what the other side feels like.

Hillsboro is the quietest 2-0 in the area

Twenty-eight to nothing at Hazelwood East on Thursday, and the box score reads like a staff meeting gone perfectly: five different rushers for 187 yards, two quarterbacks combining to go 9 of 14 for 149 and a touchdown, Landon Gonzales cleaning up with 14 tackles. Methodical, balanced, unbothered. Two games into the new era, Hillsboro has outscored its opponents 76-6, and the offseason question about who would carry the offense has been answered with a shrug: everyone.

St. Pius X answered like a contender

Whatever the Lancers brought home from Indiana, Mehlville paid for it: 61-8, with Cody Shaver ripping off 267 yards and six touchdowns on just 14 carries — 19 yards a pop — and Brody Ervin adding 146 more on nine. The defense sacked Mehlville quarterbacks eight times. Through two weeks Shaver is second in the metro in touchdowns with eight, and his 415 rushing yards on the Post-Dispatch area leaderboard are the most of anyone on the Missouri side of the river — the encore season is precisely on schedule. Now comes the night the program has circled since spring: Priory visits Friday to christen the new on-campus stadium.

Around the Quad County orbit

St. Vincent keeps doing champion things quietly: 34-0 over Ste. Genevieve, and the defending league champs have now allowed seven points all season. The league schedule opens Friday at Perryville. Fredericktown 30, Herculaneum 7 was the week's reminder that September logic is a trap — the team Perryville blanked in Week 1 just handled the team that blanked Affton, while Perryville was busy giving up 54 to De Soto. The Blackcats host Jefferson on the league's Friday opening night with something to prove all over again.

Jefferson took its lumps at Park Hills Central, 27-7, but the box score carried a county-wide footnote: Sam Kerley went 16 of 29 for 207 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions, and Kerley now leads the county in passing yards and efficiency — a lead that, with Parker Perry in a sling, nobody is likely to take back soon. Nobody sketched Jefferson owning the county's air superiority back in August.

One point, the other direction

A week after winning 49-48, Eureka lost 29-28 to Hannibal — on a touchdown with 14 seconds left and a two-point conversion, after the Wildcats led 21-7 at the end of the first quarter. Two games, two one-point margins, one of each kind. Coughing up a lead that size stings, but the opponent played in last year's Class 4 state final; the Wildcats should watch the fourth-quarter tape once, then burn it.

Growing pains, and the game the heat took

Affton, held to 12 total yards in Week 1, put up 32 on Crystal City — proof of life on one sideline, growing pains on the other, with the Hornets now 0-2 in the centennial season. Southern Boone handled North County 41-13, and Cuba's trip to St. James came up six points short, 30-24.

And then there's the strangest line on the sheet: Bayless 16, Grandview 0, suspended for heat-related issues — a score that now stands as the final. It was that kind of weekend across the area: trainers busier than coordinators, water breaks built into quarters, and one scoreboard frozen mid-game. The heat was the story of the week everywhere. In Grandview it literally ended the game.

Week 2, the whole board

• St. Mary's 14, Festus 12 · Windsor 64, Lutheran South 46 · Seckman 71, North Point 35
• Northwest 27, Fox 7 · De Soto 54, Perryville 32 · Hillsboro 28, Hazelwood East 0 (Thurs.)
• St. Pius X 61, Mehlville 8 · St. Vincent 34, Ste. Genevieve 0 · Fredericktown 30, Herculaneum 7
• Park Hills Central 27, Jefferson 7 · Affton 32, Crystal City 14 · Valle Catholic 42, Rockwood Summit 7
• Hannibal 29, Eureka 28 · St. James 30, Cuba 24 · Southern Boone 41, North County 13
• Bayless 16, Grandview 0 (suspended for heat; stands as final)

Week 3: three we've circled

• Friday — Festus at Windsor: the league opener nobody would have described this way in July — the 0-2 standard, without its quarterback, visiting a 2-0 team averaging 49 a game.
• Friday — Priory at St. Pius X: the new stadium's first game. A program one season removed from a state final christens its own home field — these nights don't come along twice.
• Friday — De Soto at North County: the Raiders beat the Dragons twice last fall, by a point in September and again in the district round. If the 54-point version of De Soto shows up, this is the revenge game of the young season.

The rest of the Friday slate: Jefferson at Herculaneum in Quad County play, Holt at Hillsboro, Bayless at Crystal City, St. Vincent at Perryville, Northwest at University City, Hazelwood West at Fox, and Seckman at Lindbergh. Thursday sends Oakville to McCluer.

County coverage runs all season in partnership with Live Stream STL, which broadcasts these games live. Catch up on the Week 1 recap and the season preview that framed it all. Athlete development, as always, by M4P — Movement 4 Power.

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