Monroe City flexes its muscles in blowout win over Clark County

MONROE CITY, Mo. – The Monroe City Panthers hit the 58-point mark for the second straight game on Friday night, downing Clark County 58-16 at Lankford Field.

After a day of rain throughout Northeast Missouri, it was a cool, crisp and dry night and a fast turf track as the Panthers rolled up 455 yards yards rushing in the contest and scored on every possession except for the game’s final one where they took a knee to run out the clock.

Panther quarterback Kyle Hays was able to jumpstart his team to a quick 16-0 lead. On the team’s first drive, he tossed a 17 yard touchdown pass to Deion White and he quickly followed that up with a one-yard touchdown run on the next drive. Hays set up that short touchdown plunge with a 32-yard run.

Clark County was able to answer on a Johnny Shinn 55-yard touchdown run and the two-point conversion cut the Monroe City lead in half at 16-8.

But then the Panthers dropped the hammer and rolled off 34 unanswered points to take a 50-8 lead.

Hays found Cade Chapman on a 40-yard touchdown pass, Joshua Talton scored the first of his three touchdowns, Hays hit Waylon DeGrave on a 71-yard touchdown pass and Talton then added the next two scores, one from 10 yards out and the other from 63 yards out.

“I thought the offensive line really got out after it and was playing a lot more physical tonight,” Monroe City Coach David Kirby told 107.5 FM The Lake on their postgame show. “For us to get to the goals that we want to reach, our offensive line has to play…just nasty, physical and gritty.”

So Kirby’s team tops 50 points in back-to-back weeks and he has a quarterback who threw three touchdowns and ran for another and another back who ran for three scores. Sounds tough to stop.

“I’ve said this for years that when they asked me what kind of offense we run, I tell them we run the spread, because I spread the ball around and even when we’re in our shotgun/wing T stuff,” Kirby said on 107.5 FM. “We’ve got great lanes for the run, and our play action sets up some really good passing plays so, you know, as we’ve kind of been talking, it’s like you got to kind of pick your poison in some spots.

Monroe City (7-1) now faces Highland next Friday night with the Clarence Cannon Conference championship in the balance. The Cougars downed Brookfield 24-18 on Friday night while Brookfield handed Monroe City its only loss of the season two weeks ago. Centralia also fell to Macon on Friday night.

“The big thing is we’ve got an opportunity to go look at the film, try to continue to get better and hopefully be a better version of ourselves next week than we were tonight,” Kirby said. “We know Highland is a very explosive group. They’ve got a really great quarterback, but so do we. They’ve got some good athletes, but you know what? So do we. So, it’s gonna come down to who can make the least amount of mistakes and who can establish the line of scrimmage.”