‘Fortunate’ Mules played a football season to remember

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but also fitting, that the MSHSAA football season crowned district champions on Friday the 13th.

A season unlike any in a century ended a week earlier for the Poplar Bluff Mules with a 55-0 loss to Jackson in the district semifinal.

“It was a bizarre season,” Mules coach David Sievers said.

Like many teams around the state, Poplar Bluff didn’t get in a full nine-game regular season and had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic on a weekly basis. The entire team was in quarantine for a full week due to contact tracing, then had two days to prepare for their playoff game, which they won against a team that had only played twice up to that point.

The season-opening opponent changed three weeks before kickoff.

“With everything that’s going on, I feel very fortunate that we got nine games in,” Sievers said.

When the spring sports season was canceled due to the pandemic and summer activities were approved by MSHSAA, there was no way of knowing if a fall season could be played safely.

Getting to practice and play was a “little window of normalcy in what is otherwise a crazy time,” Sievers said. “It was good. I think football was a good thing for everybody.”

With all the restrictions during the summer, Sievers felt the team was “pretty prepared” going into the season that started with a 42-0 win over an Agapé team making its varsity debut.

The Mules didn’t play a home game for the entire month of September, giving up a Week 5 home game to play at Rolla, only to have that game canceled hours before kickoff.

Players missed time due to contact tracing nearly every week before the entire team and coaching staff was put into quarantine resulting in the cancelation of a game at Hillsboro.

Sievers said none of the positive tests for the virus at the school were related to football.

“I would hate to be in a situation some of these schools are finding themselves in right now,” Sievers said of teams forfeiting their playoff.

“We feel really fortunate that we got in as much as we did. It was almost like playing two different seasons.”

All four of Poplar Bluff’s losses were to ranked opponents that were playing for a title Friday night. At 5-4, the Mules finished with a winning record for the 55th time in the last 101 seasons, but it’s now been 20 years since the program’s last title.

Since the district format changed in 2012, the Mules have yet to play in the district final, losing in the semifinal in each of the last six years.

“I told the kids after the Jackson game the second time around, I said, ‘guys I’m proud of the way you played, I’m proud of your effort, but that is what we have to get to. Whatever it takes. You guys have to be willing to work that hard to get where they’re at,” Sievers said.

“And so that’s kind of our goal.”

The Mules will have to do it without a senior class that scored 56% of the team’s touchdowns. It featured Trenton Davis, DJ Dennis, Gavyn Hays, Carter House, Alex Ketcherside, Colin Lamberson, Chris Matlock, Johnathan Martin, Marcus McFarland, LeBryan McDonald, Damarieus Robinson, Lonnie Ruff, Dante Sharp, Logan Strauts, Preston Taylor and Carson Tucker.

Twenty years from now they’ll likely remember Taylor’s 5-yard catch against Jackson more than the final score.