The Indianola football team fell just short of taking down #2 Urbandale on their home field Friday evening, as the J-Hawks converted a 4th and goal to score a touchdown with less than 20 seconds remaining to win 28-27.

The J-Hawks scored first on a 7-minute opening drive, but missed the extra point to take a 6-0 lead. The Indians answered immediately with a CJ Kuehl 51 yard run to bring them to the 2, before tossing a pass to Mark Pepper to take the 7-6 lead. The Indians would get a stop, then score again on a Kuehl pass to Colton Gordon to take a 14-6 lead. The J-Hawks scored before the halftime break, but couldn’t convert a two-point conversion as the Indians led 14-12.

After receiving the third quarter kick at the 40 yard line, the Indians threw a lateral pass to Jaxon Morawski who then threw it to Mark Pepper for a 60-yard score for a 21-12 lead. As was the theme of the evening, Urbandale answered with a touchdown to make it a one score game at 21-18, but late in the third the Indians answered again with a Kuehl 38-yard touchdown run to take a 27-18 lead.

It was all J-Hawks after that however, as they kicked a field goal to get the score within 6 at 27-21, followed by an Indians missing a 32 yard field goal that would have gotten the lead back to 9, then Urbandale went on an 80-yard scoring drive to score the winning points. Indians head coach Eric Kluver tells KNIA Sports Indianola’s record doesn’t show how good of a team the Indians are.

“We were here to play. It wasn’t perfect, but we gave ourselves a chance but unfortunately we couldn’t make that one play to finish the game. We’ll grow from this and learn. The great thing about this year is everyone makes the playoffs, and there is going to be a team out there that is going to look at our record and think they have a pretty easy game. I would beg to differ.”

Pepper ended with 86 yards receiving and two touchdowns. The Indians fall to 1-3 on the season, and will next play at Sioux City West.