Photo courtesy of Troy L. Hugen Photography

The 2024 season came to an end in the first round of the Class 1A playoffs Friday night for the Pella Christian football team, as they fell 40-7 at South Hardin in a game heard live on 92.1 KRLS.

After playing ten minutes of scoreless football, the Tigers capped off a ten-play, 65 yard drive with a two yard rushing score to take a 7-0 lead. Just over a minute later, South Hardin struck for a 57-yard touchdown on the ground to grow their advantage to 14-0, before tacking on a pair of touchdowns in the second quarter to take a 26-0 lead into halftime. The Tigers went up 40-0 with touchdowns midway through the third and fourth quarters, but Brecken Ritzert connected with Caleb Volk for a 20-yard passing touchdown with 12 seconds left to prevent Pella Chrsitian from being shut out. The Eagles struggled to slow down South Hardin’s rushing attack, as the Tigers ran for 385 yards behind Jaxson Drury’s 19 carries for 247 yards. Pella Christian head coach Rich Kacmarynski said that a combination of great play by South Hardin and offensive inefficiencies hurt his team’s defense.

“They’ve got a big offensive line, they’ve got a nice back that runs hard. We just didn’t do enough offensively. I mean, I think, we really put our defense in a bad spot. We had a couple turnovers there in the first half. We’d get something going and we’d have a turnover or mistake and that’s really hard in our defense and put our defense in a bad spot. They had a nice team and we really needed to score early and get some momentum going offensively to keep our defense off the field, but we did not do that.”

The Eagles end the season with a 3-6 overall record and will graduate 11 seniors from the program.