Ethan Berry carries LaVille’s Nathan Nichols-Petersen during sectional championship football action in Lakeville Friday night. (Photos by James Costello)

LAKEVILLE — On the verge of a historic season, Triton’s football team wanted to win just one more for a fallen teammate. Instead, it was a LaVille team that finally broke through after three straight years of futility in the Sectional 41 championship game.

When it was over, all Triton coach Ron Brown could do was shake his head and tip his hat to the Lancers.

“I’m disappointed, but by no means am I disappointed with kids and their effort,” said Brown, whose team fell just one win short of a program-record nine wins with Friday’s narrow 10-7 loss. “I don’t think anyone would’ve said coming into this year before our first game ‘Hey, Triton is going to be in the sectional championship.’ Well, hard work and doing things the right way, we were in the sectional championship. And you know what? If it had to be any team that knocked us off, congratulations to LaVille. They’ve been here now four times, and they’re able to finally capture one. That program and the coach and their kids, they’re class acts, and hat’s off to them.”

With quarterback Bo Snyder struggling through a deep thigh bruise and the Lancers (8-4) leading most of the night, Triton (8-4) was still in position when Vince Helton hit LaVille sophomore running back Kolby Watts in the backfield, and he and Tye Orsund recovered the ensuing fumble at the LaVille 18 with 1:51 remaining on the game clock. A dropped pass to the right side left Triton facing fourth and 4 at the 12, and the Trojans lined up to kick a field goal trailing 10-7 with just 47 seconds left to play. Following a Lancer timeout designed to ice Triton kicker Brandon Lenker, Snyder stood up out of the hold and fired into the middle of the end zone, but the would-be game-winner fell to the ground with no one there to catch it.

The Lancers set up in the V formation and ran out the remaining seconds, then erupted into an onfield celebration for a championship four years in the making after falling in the sectional finale each of the past three seasons, including a pair of three-point heartbreakers each of the past two years. Triton’s players sulked off the field in disappointment, their heads bowed and their hopes dashed.

“If you win games because you trust kids, you’ve got to lose games because you trust kids, right? That’s what it came down to. It didn’t happen there, and it’s disappointing but that’s just the reality of it,” summed up Brown of the decisive trick play.

LaVille celebrates its first sectional title since 2003.

“It feels really good,” said LaVille coach Will Hostrawser of the championship, his first with the program and the Lancers’ first since 2003. “This school is a special school. We’re all close. We’re a very, very young ball club and to see the young kids pull for the old kids and vice versa, it’s just really nice. The kids in practice this week amped it upped and practiced even harder it seemed like, and they were really, really hungry for it.”

The win represented the Lancers’ fifth straight since a 3-4 start to the season and a reversal of an earlier 22-14 loss at Triton. With Snyder’s mobility hampered by injury, the Trojans struggled to move the ball over the first half, recording a single first down to LaVille’s eight and just 36 total offensive yards as the Lancers dominated the time of possession, holding the ball a full 16:44 of the opening 24 minutes.

“We’ve been riding our defense all year,” explained Hostrawser. “Offensively, we’ve changed things up as the season went on, did some personnel shifts and tried putting people in different seats on the bus, so to speak, to just spark something. We just feel that if we can hold an opponent’s offense down a little bit, and if we can grind out things, good things tend to happen for us.”

But despite the rough start, Triton trailed just 3-0 at halftime, LaVille’s only points coming from a 33-yard Dakota Figg field goal with two seconds left in the opening period. A 9-yard completion from Lancer quarterback Braxton Sauer to Jacob Good at the Trojan 16 was ruled inches short on fourth down at the six-minute mark of the second stanza and a Drew Stichter sack of Sauer on another fourth down attempt from the Triton 25 at the 4:42 stop of the second kept the visitors within three at the break.

Tye Orsund makes a LaVille tackler miss.

LaVille marched the ball 49 yards to the Trojan 21 on the opening possession of the second half, but the home team turned over on downs once more when Sauer’s pass to Cody Wireman fell incomplete on fourth and 6 with 5:58 remaining in the third quarter. Triton’s offense finally got rolling on the ensuing possession, and the Trojans got some much-needed momentum when LaVille was whistled for encroachment after some discussion by officials on a third and 1 at the Trojan 42, extending the drive at the 4:28 stop of the period. Three plays later, Triton capitalized when Orsund reeled in a high, wobbly pass from Snyder for a 47-yard touchdown catch-and-carry. Lenker’s PAT with 2:52 on the clock gave the Trojans a 10-3 advantage, which they held into the final frame.

“I think it was a game of some young men playing through some injuries that would’ve sidelined other kids to just get out here and get ready to play this week,” said Brown. “I appreciate the effort that they put out there. It’s pretty impressive that Bo could even walk right now with the injury that he sustained last week. He kept that under wraps, and our team rallied around him. We knew that we were going to have issues with being able to run everything that we wanted. We didn’t complain; we just showed up and we played every single play to the very end. That’s all you can ask from these guys.”

But after a Riley Wagoner interception of Snyder and 17-yard return to the Triton 29 just 57 seconds into the fourth, LaVille needed just three plays to punch back with Watts’ 8-yard sweep around the right side and into the end zone, giving the Lancers back the lead with 9:55 remaining in the game. The edges were where LaVille found offensive success throughout the night as they out-gained their guests 154 yards to 77 on the ground Friday, paced by Watt’s 94 yards.

“Our offensive line is fairly young — I think we have one senior on it, and one kid our center R.J. (Gentner) and David King are the two returners off that. The other guys are young,” explained Hostrawser. “It’s their first varsity starts, honestly. They’re in start 12 or 11 because they didn’t really start at the beginning of the year. We felt that, for us, it’s a lot easier to teach things with footwork and speed than it is with strength because we are so young.

“But they found something, they got a spark back a couple weeks ago, and we’ve been able to run with it. Our running backs have done a nice job getting to the edge, and now we’re starting to mix back inside with it a little bit as our kids get more seasoned.”

Snyder went 9-of-19 with a touchdown and an interception for 109 passing yards in a gutsy performance at LaVille. The Lancers held the usually-prolific Max Slusser to only 29 rushing yards in eight carries, while Ethan Berry finished with a team-high 46 yards in seven rushes, taking the ball out of several direct snaps in the second half with Snyder’s own run game hampered to 14 yards.

Delano Shumpert is brought down by Corbin Brown.

Berry also led his team in receiving with 49 yards in two catches, followed by Orsund’s four catches worth 34 yards and Stichter’s two receptions for 21 yards. Lee Mullet and Slusser led the Triton defense with eight tackles apiece, followed by Nathan Riggins’ six as the Trojans fell one heartbreaking game short of their program’s first sectional title since 2008 and the first nine-win season in school history.

It was an especially bitter pill for Triton in the wake of the tragic death of two-way lineman Cam Scarberry in a car accident Sept. 17. A sectional championship was on Scarberry’s goal sheet prior to the start of the season, and the Trojans were hoping to honor their fallen teammate with a win Friday night. But while the team may have fallen a few points short of their goal, Friday’s loss took little away from an exceptional season which saw the Trojans fight through adversity after adversity.

Following Scarberry’s death, the Trojans received another scare in Week 10 when Lenker, receiver Delano Shumpert and lineman Billy Smith were all involved in another car accident, sidelining Lenker and limiting the already-injured Shumpert in Tritons’ sectional-opener with Caston. Shumpert, who played with a broken hand throughout the season, finished the year with 44 receptions and 842 receiving yards. Snyder closed out the banner season with 114 completions totaling 1,985 yards, including the nine completions and 109 yards he threw for with a deep thigh bruise at LaVille.

Drew Stichter tackles Dakota Figg.

The Trojans scratched and clawed their way to the program’s best finish in decades, and Brown credits seniors Stichter and Mullet — part of an outgoing class of eight seniors — for helping create the culture shift that got the team there.

“You always want to get those goals for those seniors that have done so much,” said Brown. “Drew Stichter, amazing kid. Him and Lee Mullet, they’re catalysts of turning this program around. Great character, great kids, hard work. They do things the right way. They’re going to go on to be very successful young adults. We’re going to get wins from that later on in life.”

LaVille advances to play No. 1-ranked Pioneer — which continued its 12-0 run through the season with a 48-20 win over rival Lafayette Central Catholic Friday — in regional action in Royal Center next week.