Crim: Panthers refuse to settle for just winning games, focus on climb to top of CCC

PALMYRA, Mo. — The Palmyra football team has accomplished what it needed to do during the first four weeks of the season.

Win the winnable games.

The Panthers ran their record to 3-1 Friday night with a 46-6 victory over winless Highland. That’s one more win than the previous two teams recorded combined. They haven’t been this far above .500 at this point since the 2020 edition won its first 12 games before falling to St. Pius X in the Class 2 state semifinals.

Palmyra’s only loss came on the road in Week 2 against state-ranked powerhouse Bowling Green, which has gone 40-3 since the start of the 2021 season, winning 31 straight regular-season games in the process.

The next five weeks, beginning Friday night at home against another 3-1 team, North Callaway, will determine if the Panthers can sustain the turnaround under second-year coach Dalton Hill.

Looming after North Callaway are Clarence Cannon Conference road encounters versus Monroe City, Centralia and unbeaten South Shelby, the top three finishers in the league a year ago.

“If we want to win those big games, we’ve got to continue to play hard for four quarters, be self-disciplined, be physical — all those things in football that it takes to be successful,” Hill said.

Neither Hill nor his players thought they met those standards Friday night despite the lopsided victory over Highland.

A turnover, penalties and missed blocks kept the game close until the final three minutes of the first half, when Palmyra took advantage of miscues by the Cougars to rattle off 24 straight points to take control.

“We wanted to keep the ball rolling from last week (a 56-14 thumping of Macon) and just come out and dominate all four quarters,” junior quarterback Rylan Compton said. “But it wasn’t that way. We didn’t come out firing like we did last week.”

Hill and his staff have been working to restore a winning culture since he was hired in April 2023 after a winless 2022 season that was followed by months of turmoil.

So, even after a victory in a game where the offense finally began to click and the defense dominated and scored one of the Panthers’ six touchdowns, there was a singular post-game message.

“Teams that have strong winning culture about them look at games like this and they’re excited that they won and they’re happy and they’re going to celebrate that,” Hill said. “But they look at ways to get better.

“We wanted to celebrate this. We want them to feel good about it, and they should. Winning on homecoming is a big deal. But we’ve got to find ways to get better, keep getting better. If we want to put Palmyra football back at the top, we’ve got to keep climbing.”

The Panthers won twice in 10 games last season and were competitive against both Centralia and Monroe City, teams that finished second and third in the CCC, respectively. There was optimism entering the offseason.

They opened this season by outlasting Hallsville in double-overtime 42-40. It was important because they have a relatively young roster, with 30 of 37 players being underclassmen.

Many of those are key contributors, including Compton and sophomore running back Wyatt Augspurg, so early success showed their offseason work in the weight room and renewed attention to detail were producing results.

Now, after registering back-to-back victories for the first time in three seasons, Hill said Palmyra has an opportunity to continue that momentum and “start to build this place back to where it used to be.”

That means continuing to strive to be better and never settling. That simple approach, the coaching staff believes, will enable the program to reach its goals.

“Like we tell the kids, we have high standards here and high expectations, so we want to live up to those,” Hill said. “We’re starting to develop that mindset within the football program. Again, it comes back to doing the basics well and coming to work every single day going forward.

“We’re going to have to keep getting better every single day. I know that’s repetitive, but we’re going to have to come to work with the attitude of, ‘Hey, I’m going to work today; I’m going to do the best I can every single day.’ ”

The players seemingly have bought in, uniformly parroting their coach in postgame comments. When asked what being 3-1 meant to the team at this stage of the season, Compton toed the company line.

“Keep going, don’t stop and keep on playing,” he replied.

The Panthers have five weeks to do just that.