Webb City Cardinals Repeat as Class 4 Show-Me Bowl Champs

If a high school team completes just one pass in a game for a mere 25 yards, that would be indisputable evidence that the team would get destroyed in the game.

That’s hardly so. The Webb City Cardinals completed just one pass for 25 yards but romped over MICDS 56-42 to win the 2011 Show-Me Bowl title at the Edward Jones Dome in downtown St. Louis. It was back-to-back titles for the Cardinals from Southwest Missouri.

Statistically, this was probably one of the most lopsided and bizarre outcomes in the modern era of the game.

Thomas Miltello shredded the Cardinals secondary with a 36 for 46 performance and five TDs. Webb City went in the opposite direction, rushing 478 yards and seven TDs on the ground as a team. Militello established a Missouri State High School record completing 30 consecutive passes in the past three games (the last two in the win over Borgia; a perfect 15 of 15 performance in Farmington and the first 13 in the championship game.) He’d trade in that whole record for the one that just slipped through Jack Howell’s outstretched fingertips on the Webb City 20 with 49 seconds left and that’s where in effect the season ended. The Rams were driving for the tying TD which would have pulled them with in a point at 42-all. For the record, the Rams were planning to go for the two point conversion, should they have tied the game.

Webb City coach John Roderique was mopping his brow at the post media interview. “If you had asked me if all this would have happened to me starting 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Webb City has now tied Valle Ste. Genevieve and Jefferson City for most Show-Me Bowl titles (10 apiece), though the Warriors can move one up with the Class 1 title game later this afternoon.

Roderique, who now has a record of 178-11 earned his seventh Show-Me Bowl title. His team won the 2010 title at the Dome too.

It was a brilliant swan song performance for Militello who will next pick up a football playing at Dartmouth College next fall. He connected on five TDs, finishing his senior year with 44 TDs and more than 3,000 yards of passing.

He fired two beauties to Mac Cornwell, two to Foster Bundy and a solo TD to William Moorehead. The last to Bundy was a highlight performance with Bundy battling his way into the end zone on a 39 yard pass draped with two defenders.

Like against Ladue, where senior Deavin Edwards ran for 386 yards and six TDs, the MICDS defense could not stop the ground game. The Cardinals rushed 40 times for 478 yards. They were supposed to take a knee in victory formation with 48 seconds left in the game but junior running back Phoenix Johnson weaved his way 67 yards quickly through the secondary for the clincher.

Johnson rushed for 192 yards and 2 TDs. Williams scored four times on the ground and the Cardinals left MICDS’s defense gasping for air.

Scherer, in his final game rushed 14 times for 97 yards. His longest run from scrimmage was a 40 yarder..

MICDS can do a lot of things on a football field, but one thing they failed to do in a 14-1 season was beat Webb City.