‘Tears of joy this time.’ Mayfield soars in record-setting Class 2A football championship.
Defense wins championships — even when, at times, it appears optional.
A consequential fumble recovery and a fourth-down stop bookended Mayfield’s 53-48 victory over Owensboro Catholic in the Class 2A UK HealthCare Sports Medicine Football State Final on Friday night at Kroger Field in Lexington. In between, the teams combined for 1,104 yards of offense, 14 touchdowns, 11 extra points and two field goals.
It all added up to the second highest scoring KHSAA championship game ever played (Trinity outlasted Male, 59-56, for the 2002 Class 4A title), and the Cardinals’ first title since 2015.
“These guys are resilient,” said Mayfield coach Joe Morris. “That game was so long I don’t know if I can even remember everything. But the bottom line is, that was two great football programs going at it, and — hey — we came out on top.”
Mayfield has won several state titles — 13 total, now — but it’s never won one the way it did Friday. The Cardinals (13-1) surrendered 594 yards of offense but put up 510 themselves, albeit more slowly than their opponent. Owensboro Catholic (14-1) thrived in the air — 50 passes to 14 rushes — and finished with a possession time of 13:12. Mayfield countered with a more even spread — 40 rushes to 33 pass attempts — and a hefty 34:48 of possession.
Jutoriaus “JuJu” Starks, a senior running back, accounted for 34 of the Mayfield carries en route to MVP honors. He turned them into 194 yards and four touchdowns, including a 55-yarder for the Cardinals’ final score with 8:26 to play.
“Can’t nobody stop us but us,” Starks said.
Owensboro Catholic responded to Starks’ last score in just over a minute. A 71-yard pass from Brady Atwell to William “Tutt” Carrico set Atwell up two plays later for a TD run, his fourth, to pull the Aces within the final score. They forced a turnover on downs at their own 29 and drove it to the Mayfield 42 but failed to move it past the original line of scrimmage on their final set of downs.
Carrico set multiple records — the state single-season record for TD receptions (30, previously 28) and a KHSAA championship game record for receiving yards (332, fourth most in any game) — but couldn’t reel in any of his three targets on the Aces’ final drive. Atwell, a 6-foot-3 junior, was 24-of-49 for 514 yards overall; on the final drive, Mayfield held him to 2-for-6 and sacked him for the first time to effectively end the Aces’ night. The Cardinals quickly gained the necessary first down to move into victory formation.
“We just couldn’t quite make the play in the end,” Owensboro Catholic coach Jason Morris said. “We have won games like this throughout the last three years, and I honestly thought we were gonna win this thing. It just didn’t work out for us.”
A fumble on the Aces’ first play from scrimmage, a 14-yard gain, turned into three points for Mayfield. Mayfield came up with another crucial fourth-down stop at its own 23 as the second quarter got underway, and from there ballooned its lead to 20 points before the Aces started chipping away.
“I know we gave up 48 points, but man (our defense) was fighting,” Joe Morris said. “That’s a really, really good offensive football team.”
Mayfield quarterback Zane Cartwright was more efficient than his counterpart, going 22-of-33 for 322 yards and two TD passes. Braden Morris snagged 11 of those receptions for 150 yards and one TD.
Special teams made a significant impact for Mayfield, too. Xavier Biggers, in addition to snagging Mayfield’s other TD reception, returned a kickoff 86 yards for a TD in the first half. Cardinals kicker Lincoln Suiter was perfect on PATs (5-for-5) and two field-goal tries.
Mayfield understands deeply how pivotal the kicking game can be: Its trip to Lexington last year ended in a 14-13 defeat to Beechwood, wherein Suiter’s extra-point attempt banged off the goal post with 1:13 left. No one on the Mayfield sideline was more dejected despite the team’s reassurance that the loss wasn’t on his shoulders.
Last week, Suiter kicked the winning field goal to put Mayfield in this game. He got to see the ball go through Kroger Field’s college uprights — 5 feet less wide than high school posts — less than three minutes into the bout with Owensboro Catholic, and from 40 yards out to boot.
“It was a lot of relief from it, because I was like, ‘If I make this field goal here, it’s gonna set the tone a little bit,’ and that’s what it did,” Suiter said. “ … “I still cried, but it’s tears of joy this time not tears of sadness.”
The Cardinals, ranked No. 2 in the KHSAA RPI at the end of the regular season, in consecutive weeks defeated Lexington Christian Academy (No. 4), Beechwood (No. 3) and Owensboro Catholic (No. 1) to cap a daunting road and end a burdensome trend: They were winless in their four previous finals, all played at Kroger Field.
“I’m a big UK football fan but I don’t guess I’ve ever liked this stadium too much ‘cause I was 0-4 here,” Joe Morris, who improved to 7-7 in finals, said with a laugh.
Football has for decades been a unifying force in Mayfield, a town of about 10,000 people that was among several Western Kentucky communities struck by an EF4 tornado on Dec. 10, 2021. At least 2,500 of them turned out to see the Cardinals play four hours away from home, just as they did last year, and will do so again when — not if — their boys return.
It’s hard to think the drive home could ever get better than this.
“We’re still rebuilding, and I think that made our community even stronger,” Joe Morris said. “The last couple weeks have been packed houses, atmospheres that make kids want to play football. … This community loves us. We have restaurants that I guarantee were sold out with people watching on KHSAA TV. It’s a special community for a football program, and I’ve just been fortunate enough to coach there for a long time.”