Six weeks ago, when Southeast of Saline senior quarterback Gannon Jacobson went down with a season-ending injury, things could have gone south in a hurry for the Trojans.
Instead, the offense didn’t miss a beat.
In fact, junior Tiernan Ptacek stepped right in and finished a scoring drive as Southeast rolled to a 52-16 victory over Hillsboro in the sixth game of the season. The Trojans have not looked back.
“We feel very fortunate to have Tiernan,” said Southeast coach Mitch Gebhardt, whose unbeaten Trojans (11-0) play host to Hoisington (10-0) in a 7 p.m. Class 2A semifinal game Friday at Steve Fritz Field. “He’s gotten half the reps for a year and a half in practice, and he’s been in game situations, but he was never the starting quarterback.”
“When he stepped in, we didn’t change anything we did. We didn’t change how we called a game. We have full confidence in Tiernan.”
Last year, in his first year as a starter, Jacobson helped lead Southeast to the school’s second-ever state championship with a 13-0 record.
“Gannon started every game his junior season and then the first six games of his senior year, and he never lost a game as a starting quarterback,” Gebhardt said of Jacobson, who completed 65.2% of his passes for 1,028 yards and 15 touchdowns with just two interceptions in six games this season to go with 288 yards and five scores on the ground. “So, as far as production and things like that, and understanding the offense, Gannon was our guy.”
The fact that the Trojans have continued to excel with Ptacek at the controls is a testament not only to their depth and dominance, but also a coaching philosophy of preparing for any eventuality.
“We changed that several years back. We split reps with all the guys that we feel may get to play,” Gebhardt said. “(Ptacek) has played a lot of downs as a sophomore and the first six games of his junior season because we did have some leads and we were able to put him in a varsity football game and see what that was like.”
It hasn’t hurt that Southeast outscored its first 11 opponents by an average of 55-9, allowing numerous backups to get on the field. But the repetitions in practice have been just as valuable.
“It’s all of that,” said senior running back/inside linebacker Grady Gebhardt, the Trojans’ leading rusher and receiver. “It’s great having that depth there and having those people (get varsity repetitions) in practice.”
Senior running back/linebacker Grady Gebhardt
Southeast’s depth surfaced again one week after Jacobson’s season ended, when the Trojans lost starting center Eli Jennings for the year. Senior Killian Vaughn, part of a nine-man offensive line rotation, was there to fill the void.
“Coach (Trenton) Douglas does a great job of preparing the lineman,” said senior Brody Chambers, a two-way starter at right guard and defensive end. “We all have subs coming in for us, and then us three, me, Drew Weller (starting right guard) and Killian, all rotate at center to help have a break.”
SE of Saline senior lineman Brody Chambers
The Trojans’ depth is evident across the board, as evidenced by their statistics on both sides of the ball. Even Grady Gebhardt, who has rushed for 1,779 yards and 32 touchdowns and caught 26 passes for 587 yards with 10 scores, gets his breaks.
In last week’s 44-6 quarterfinal victory over Phillipsburg, Gebhardt ran for 172 yards and four touchdowns on 21 carries, but Amarion Holub added 105 yards on just nine attempts. Ptacek completed 13 of 17 passes for 158 yards, including a pair of touchdown strikes to Bryson Lippold.
Southeast has three rushers with 300-plus yards and six receivers with at least 11 catches.
On defense, seven Trojans have 50 or more tackles, led by Chambers and inside linebacker Vaughn with 67 each, while Chambers has 16 tackles for loss and is tied with Weller for the team lead with four sacks. Malachi Hopkins has four interceptions.
“I feel like over the last several years, our defense has been what we’ve kind of hung our hat on,” Mitch Gebhardt said. “Coach (Chance) Ptacek does a great job with our game plan, and we’ve done a good job of executing.”
If the Trojans can hold off Hoisington for a second straight year in the playoffs, they will advance to the state championship game Nov. 29 in Hutchinson against this week’s semifinal winner between Nemaha Central (11-0) and Osage City (10-1).
