Sayre seizes historic first state football title with gritty win over Raceland

When it came to making the biggest plays on the biggest stage, the team who had never been there or done that delivered.

The Sayre Spartans (15-0), who didn’t exist as a football team in 2017, raised the Class A championship trophy a mere seven years later with a 27-22 win over Raceland in the UK Healthcare Sports Medicine State Football Finals at Kroger Field on Friday.

“We talk about ‘dare to be great. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be scared of the moment. Believe in our core values, believe in what we preach as a program,’” explained Sayre coach Chad Pennington, a former NFL star who helped restore football at a school that hadn’t played the sport in 40 years. “It was a culmination of that. I think it just makes it sweet, just knowing that these guys put in the work. We gave them the road map, but they made it their own, and they’ve done that all year.”

Brock Coffman, who recently signed with Louisville and earned Class A player of the year honors before the game, caught three touchdown passes from fellow senior Luke Pennington. Running back Charlie Slabaugh added a rushing touchdown along the way. Coffman totaled 143 yards on 12 catches and was named the title game’s most valuable player.

But the game hinged on Raceland’s final drive as Sayre held a slim lead. The Rams benefited from a shanked punt that gave them the ball on Sayre’s 48-yard line with 5:25 left in the game.

While Sayre had gotten defensive stops during the game, including a potentially back-breaking fourth down denial on the Rams’ own 26-yard line early in the third quarter, Raceland’s offense also showed it could carve up the Spartans.

Raceland running back Shannon Marushi and quarterback Jacob Waller each had rushing TDs to cap long drives. The Rams even showed a trick play to get on the board in the first quarter as wideout Jonah Arnett took a short pitch and then threw a 2-yard TD pass to a wide-open Jaxon Rister.

Trailing 27-22 in the fourth quarter, Raceland (10-5) quickly racked up two first downs to push to Sayre’s 27-yard line with under three minutes to play. Sayre’s defense needed to bow up.

“I told Coach (Brian) Washington to stay aggressive. We’re not going to die a slow death,” Pennington said of the moment. “Stay aggressive. … We had to make a couple of defensive changes to be even more aggressive in our scheme.”

Sayre reclaimed the momentum when defensive lineman John Luke Minner took down Raceland’s Waller for an 11-yard sack.

“That scheme you saw with the sack, that was a straight, aggressive five-man rush. Let’s force them to make the play,” Pennington said.

Forced to go for it on fourth-and-9 with 1:25 left, Raceland’s last-gasp pass fell incomplete on a hurried scramble.

Slabaugh got a first down after Raceland burned its final timeout and Sayre took a knee to run the clock out on Sayre’s first football championship.

After the game, Slabaugh confessed he believed last season was the year the Spartans would do something special. Sayre had five senior linemen to go with the same set of playmakers.

“Rebuilding all winter, I was looking around, I was like, I weigh more than all our linemen, right now,” Slabaugh, the 6-foot, 186-pound Columbia baseball commit, said with a laugh. “So I was a little nervous going into the year. But it’s a testament to Coach and the program that no matter what we have preseason, Coach is going to find a way to make it work. And those five up front, they might be small, but they’re some of the toughest kids I know.”

Luke Pennington bragged he hadn’t been sacked all year. The senior Dayton commit threw for 219 yards and the three touchdowns with an interception.

Perhaps Pennington’s biggest series came at the end of the first half when he took Sayre 66 yards in five plays using just 45 seconds. His 2-yard TD pass to Coffman put Sayre up 14-9 with six seconds left in the half.

After Sayre got the fourth-down stop deep in Raceland territory in the third quarter, Pennington found Coffman on the next play for a 26-yard touchdown and a 20-9 lead at the 7:52 mark.

“I’ve had somebody ask me this question: ‘Who’s the guy that you will want to surround yourself no matter what is going on to make you better at all aspects on the field or off the field?” Coffman said. “Luke is that guy.”

Raceland coach Michael Salmons explained his gamble on fourth-down-and-3 in the third quarter was to try to keep the Rams on the field and let them make a play. They only trailed 14-9 at that point.

Despite giving up two Sayre touchdowns in the second half, the Rams kept it close with Marushi’s 1-yard TD run to get within 20-15 with 2:22 to play in the third quarter and cut their deficit to 27-22 on Waller’s 1-yard TD in the fourth.

“We just kind of got overwhelmed that last drive,” said Salmons, whose Rams finished as Class A runner-up for a third straight season. “But our guys are resilient. That’s who we are. We’re blue-collar guys. When they put on that orange and black it means a lot to them. Hopefully, our character showed through today.”

Luke Pennington and Slabaugh served as middle school water boys as younger brothers of players who set Sayre’s football foundations.

“It’s just a really cool experience right now,” Luke Pennington said. “We’ve been here for all the years since the Sayre football program started back up. … When you have a bunch of guys that believe in one common goal, you can do anything.”

Looking back on his early days at Sayre when he cobbled together enough players to play a two-game varsity schedule in 2018, Coach Pennington acknowledged his team’s state title Friday was something anyone would have thought impossible.

“It’s an example of when hard work mixed with really good people with the same vision all come together,” Pennington said. “And to be honest … in our mission statement, in our vision, we don’t talk about being state champs. We talk about developing young men. And, hopefully, along the way, you get a chance to experience this.”

This story was originally published December 6, 2024 at 6:53 PM.

Jared Peck

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-488-2883

Jared Peck, the Herald-Leader’s Digital Sports Writer, covers high school athletics and has been with the company as a writer and editor for more than 20 years. Support my work with a digital subscription