Carthage rolls over Republic in rematch

Three weeks made a huge difference for the Republic football team in its rematch with Carthage. After staying in the game against state-ranked Carthage at home during Week 8, Republic fell behind and never seriously challenged in a 49-10 loss in the district semifinals.

 “I think the big difference for us offensively was [Carthage] changed everything. We anticipated it, we practiced and we expected that,” said Republic coach Dustin Baldwin. “But … they were not going to let us run the ball like we did last time, and they made an effort to stack the box … and we just didn’t connect on a lot of things that we thought we could.”

Republic’s passing game, which had improved throughout the season to give the Tigers a more balanced attack, never materialized Friday. Quarterback Lucas Hayes started the game by completing seven of 14 passes, but the Carthage defense turned up the pressure, forced Hayes to scramble out of the pocket, and forced 10 incompletions in a row.

On the other side of the ball, Carthage moved the ball up and down the field almost at will for most of the game.

“They’re a really good team and they’re very physical and we weren’t able to get them off the field like we needed to,” Baldwin said.

Despite giving up three touchdowns on three Carthage possessions to start the game, Republic had an opportunity to stay in the game late in the second quarter. The Tigers scored on a touchdown run by Riley Sigman to cut the Carthage lead to 21–10 with a little over two minutes remaining. But the Republic defense was unable to hold Carthage, which scored another TD and tacked on a two-point conversion before halftime, stretching the lead to 29–10.
Republic tried an on-side kick to begin the third quarter, and the ball was loose momentarily, but Carthage jumped on it, then proceeded to score again, putting the game away.

 Republic wrapped up its season with a 3–8 record. Baldwin says there are lessons to draw from this season for future years—especially after losing three close, winnable games to start the year.

“I hope our younger guys learned some things just by the way the first three games transpired, and that you have to be ready to go when the season starts and take advantage of those opportunities early,” he said. “And I was proud of the way that we got better as the season went on. And I know it didn’t show as much tonight, but there’s no doubt we’re a better football team. If we wouldn’t have dug ourselves a hole [with a 0–4 start], we would have been playing Nixa or Parkview tonight and had a two seed and a home game, probably.”

Carthage advanced to play Parkview. The Vikings beat Nixa in overtime to advance to the district championship game.