Jobe Bryant leads Park Hills Central past Seneca in Missouri Class 3 football championship game

Bryant accounts for seven touchdowns and 359 total yards

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI – Kory Schweiss has seen a lot of good high school football teams throughout his two dozen years coaching at Park Hills Central.

“I can tell you we’ve had some really good teams in the past 10-15 years – really good football teams – and we run into John Burroughs with Ezekiel Elliott and Cardinal Ritter with Luther Burden here at Mizzou and St. Mary’s with those guys everybody knew about,” Schweiss said. “… I think we were the second-best team in our class multiple times, but we just ran into the best team in the quarterfinals. We’ve had chances to win some of those quarterfinal games and we come up short. This year, these guys willed our way through it.”

This year, the Rebels became state champs.

Led by seniors Jobe Bryant and Casen Murphy, Park Hills Central defeated Seneca 48-34 to win the Missouri Class 3 championship on Friday at Memorial Stadium – the first football state title in school history.

“It means the world, you know,” Bryant said. “These past four years have been great. My freshman year through junior year, I feel like we had the talent and we just ran into a couple dudes. So this year just finally putting it all together and finally winning it, it just means the world.”

A 6-foot, 185-pound senior wide receiver, Bryant accounted for seven touchdowns and 359 total yards, recorded eight tackles, forced a fumble and recovered a fumble.

He caught 12 passes for 163 yards and four touchdowns, ran for 73 yards and two scores on seven carries and completed all seven of his pass attempts for 123 yards and a touchdown.

Bryant recovered a fumble with 1 minute 18 seconds remaining with his team ahead by eight points and then sealed the victory with a 56-yard touchdown run just 17 seconds later.

“He's pretty special,” Schweiss said. “You know, it's crazy. He could go play basketball, he could go play football, he could do whatever he wants in college. And they always tell him he's too small. They always tell him he's not fast enough. Whatever they tell him, it doesn't matter, this is what he does.”

Bryant, who led Central's basketball team to a Class 4 runner-up finish last season, entered the title game having accounted for 3,508 total yards and 42 touchdowns. He finished his senior season with 3,867 total yards and 49 total touchdowns in 14 games.

“I can't believe they're just not falling in love with the guy,” Schweiss continued. “But we're used to it. He does it for us all the time. Because we're from a podunk town in Park Hills, Missouri, I don't think we get very much love. It was nice to come up here on the big stage and for Jobe to ball out like that. I knew he would. I’ve said all along. the bigger the stage, the bigger they play. He's done that his whole career. All these guys have but he really showed out today.”

Murphy, a senior quarterback, completed 29 of 43 passes for 363 yards and four touchdowns. He added 52 rushing yards on 10 carries, giving him 415 total yards on the day.

Park Hills Central (11-3) racked up 629 total yards, including 486 passing yards.

Senior wide receivers Caden Casey and Kannon Harlow each topped 100 receiving yards: Casey caught eight passes for 138 yards, while Harlow caught eight passes for 111 yards and a TD.

Jaxon Jones, a junior linebacker, led the defense with 16 tackles and a forced fumble. Harlow added 11 tackles and snagged one of Central’s two interceptions.

Schweiss concluded the Rebels’ post-game press conference with one final statement about his team’s best player.

“I just wanna say,” the coach added, “if there’s anybody out there who needs a football player, Jobe Bryant is available.”

For as good as Bryant, Murphy and the Rebels were on Friday, it almost wasn’t good enough.

Seneca (13-1) trailed 18-0 after one quarter, 26-0 in the second quarter and 26-6 at halftime but rallied in the second half.

The Indians, who were led by running back Jackson Marrs (139 yards rushing and four touchdowns on 25 carries), outscored Central 22-16 in the third quarter and trailed just 42-34 in the final minutes before a late turnover ended their comeback hopes.

“Not a whole lot went right for us in that first half,” Seneca coach Cody Hilburn said. “We got ourselves behind the sticks with some holding calls and had a snap issue and things like that. My takeaway, and it’s been like this all year, is how resilient they are. I said at halftime, I was confident that we were going to win the football game, just cause I knew what these guys have done the entire year, the last three years in our program, that they weren’t going to go away. That’s not who we are, that’s not our identity.

“Just like I thought, we had a chance at the end. I told these guys out there, I felt like we just ran out of time. I thought we got all the momentum in the world and we just kind of ran out of time there at the end.”

MISSOURI CHAMPIONSHIPS SCOREBOARD (12/1/2023)

MISSOURI CHAMPIONSHIPS SCOREBOARD (12/2/2023)

Missouri Class 3 football championship: Park Hills Central - Seneca

Photos from Nate Latsch

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- Nate Latsch | latsch@scorebooklive.com | @SBLiveMiz