It’s said when life is at its’ toughest, that’s when you see the true character of a person come out.
For the Iola Mustangs and senior running back Cale Barnhart, their 50-14 road loss to Burlington was toughest with 3:50 left in the game.
A fumble on a pitch led to a 94-yard scoop and score for the Wildcats that ended in with the final dagger being plunged in a rough second half for the Mustangs.
While the Burlington player was nowhere near being caught, Barnhart was alone, 10 yards behind, doing all that he could to try and tackle him.
It was Barnhart that early on, had an almost 60-yard run to set up Iola’s first touchdown of the game and it was Barnhart that was running just as hard in the fourth quarter, busting another big run before the fumble.
“He’s got the biggest heart of anybody on this team,” Daugharthy said. “When we fumbled deep in our own territory, we only had one kid busting his ass to get down there. That was Cale Barnhart. That tells you all you need to know about the kid. He has an amazing heart.”
The senior didn’t score but he did lead his team in rushing with 178 yards on 16 carries.
The scoring started and ended in the first half for Iola.
Freshman Isaac Badders punched it in from five yards out to give the Mustangs their first lead of the ballgame, a lead which they held for about two minutes before senior Wildcat quarterback Connor Jeffers scored the first of his six touchdowns to give Burlington an 8-7 lead.
Jeffers and the Wildcats tacked on another score before senior running back Isaac Vink got outside and ran his way to an 18-yard touchdown to make it 16-14 in favor of Burlington.
With three minutes left on the clock, the Wildcats marched their way down the field and scored with no time left in the first half. Whether the Mustangs defense was set or not on that final scoring play as the Wildcats rushed to the line to get one final play off before time expired is debatable but the officials gave the touchdown to Burlington and the Mustangs went into the half down just eight.
Burlington got the ball to start the second half and just like the end of the second half, they were marching their way down the field led by the dangerous and tenacious Jeffers.
The defense finally got them stalled at fourth down with six to go inside of Iola’s 25. Two back-to-back encroachment penalties from the Mustangs gave the Mustangs the first down setting up a 23-yard pass from Jeffers to tight end Jacob Hawkins putting the Mustangs down 30-14.
“We’ve got to be able to bounce back from penalties like that,” Daugharthy said. “We need to have a short memory and reset and be ready to make a play but we just couldn’t’ seem to do that tonight.”
From then, the route was on.
Three Mustang turnovers resulted in three more unanswered scores for Burlington as the hopes of a comeback dwindled to almost nothing.
