Western Boone Jr. - Sr. High School

The Western Boone football team knew the final weeks of the season would be a gauntlet, facing three of the top teams in the Monon Athletic Conference. The first of those games was a trip to unbeaten Southmont on Friday night. Things couldn't have started much better for the Stars, scoring on the opening play of the game, but they couldn't sustain any consistency in a 26-23 loss to the Mounties. "Southmont did a good job of running the ball tonight, and we knew coming in it could be a long night if they got going," Western Boone head coach Justin Pelley said. "You have to give credit to them tonight. Our defense played pretty well, we gave up a couple of two-point conversions that changed the game a little bit, but we couldn't sustain anything offensively. We had some guys go down and that took us out of some things, but we were sloppy tonight. They were better than us tonight." Western Boone struck first on a 61-yard touchdown pass from Brennan Kopriva to Julian McClaine. But the offense struggled the rest of the half. Southmont took an 8-7 lead early in the second quarter, then added a field goal to up 11-7. The Stars got a short field after a botched Southmont punt late in the half, but settled for a field goal to trail 11-10. A lengthy Southmont drive ended with a turnover on downs to start the third quarter, but after Western Boone got near midfield, they turned it over themselves, giving the Mounties the ball deep in WeBo territory. freestar "There were some tough match-ups for us on offense," Pelley said. "We tried to spread it out some, and got the early touchdown, we just couldn't keep it going. We tried to adjust and get to some of our off-balance stuff, we just didn't make the plays tonight. We had chances, we just didn't execute." Southmont took advantage of the short field, scoring and getting the two-point conversion to go up 19-10. Western Boone came back with their best drive of the game, getting a 10-yard touchdown run from Jake Smith to get back within 19-17. Things got a little wacky in the final minutes. After a failed onside kick attempt by WeBo, Southmont scored a few plays later to seemingly put the game away at 26-17. But on the ensuing kick-off, Malaki Christy returned it 95 yards for a touchdown. After a failed onside kick, Southmont went four-and-out, giving WeBo the ball at their own 44 with just under 3 minutes to go. WeBo marched down to the Southmont 17, but threw an interception that sealed the game. It appeared like a WeBo receiver was leveled before the ball got there, but no flag was thrown on the play. freestar Smith had 92 yards rushing in the game. Kopriva was 9 of 19 for 128 yards and a touchdown. The Stars are back in action next week at North Putnam. "We have to stay together as a group," Pelley said. "We have to understand when teams take us out of our game what we want to do. We have to do some things better. We have to tackle better, we struggled with our punting game tonight along with our offense. Credit to Southmont for getting the win, but we shot ourselves in the foot at times tonight." Will Willems is the Sports Editor of the Lebanon Reporter. Follow him on Twitter @Will_Willems.