After a rough start, Sayre football shows it can still hang with the best

If a typical bystander judged Sayre’s 2025 football team by the first two snaps of its campaign, they’d be forgiven for crying out, “Oh, no.”

The first snap sailed backward. The second went even further in the wrong direction. Three plays into the season, the Spartans were fortunate to face a third-and-25 rather than eat a safety.

Early returns showed that Class A’s reigning state champs were nowhere near capable of mounting a title defense.

But football games last four quarters, and seasons in Kentucky last, for most, into November. Sayre lost its opener to Kentucky Country Day 31-28 on Friday and thus won’t go undefeated in the regular season, as it did each of the last two campaigns. But by the final horn, the Spartans showed plenty in a playoff-like atmosphere to warrant a revised judgment: “Oh.”

“This type of game, it’s gonna go one way or another and you can’t worry about the result,” Sayre head coach Chad Pennington said. “You have to focus on, ‘Are you improving?’ and ‘What did you learn about yourselves?’ We learned a lot about ourselves, and I’m excited.”

Sayre graduated a considerable amount of talent and production from its history-making squad. Quarterback Luke Pennington (53 TDs, 2,939 yards) is now a freshman at Dayton. Brute-force Charlie Slabaugh (13 TDs, 850 yards, 110 tackles) was even better at baseball; he’ll play for Columbia in the Ivy League this school year. Brock Coffman, now a Louisville Cardinal, ended his career with more touchdown receptions (61) than any receiver in Lexington history.

The plan, at least in the early going, is to replace Luke with two quarterbacks: Beau Perry, a senior who backed him up for most of his time at Sayre, and Gage Pennington, his younger brother. Pennington’s style and demeanor closely resembles his brother’s, down to the jersey number 10. Perry looks more than comfortable cosplaying Tim Tebow.

Chad Pennington, a former NFL quarterback, and Mark Perry, Beau’s dad and an offensive analyst for the University of Kentucky football program, got together along with their sons to map out the timeshare. What could have been a divisive call has proved unifying.

“We’re still figuring it out,” Chad Pennington said. “There’s some things that Gage can do, there’s some things that Beau can do. They’ve built a really good relationship and they support each other, and now our team feeds off of that. There’s not any tension at all.”

It helps that they both also spend ample time playing defense, Perry at outside linebacker and Pennington at free safety. Such is life in Class A football.

“We may need to sub ’em in and out on offense sometimes just to give ’em a blow,” Chad Pennington said. “That’s a hard ask.”

The split seemed to work once Sayre got its bearings, but the Spartans took nearly two quarters to string together a steady drive against KCD. Some of that was attributable to a recent injury that thrust Max Parks, a sophomore, into his varsity debut at center well ahead of schedule.

“He had some jitters just like we all did. I’m proud of him,” Chad Pennington said. “After the first quarter he was dynamite. He was on-point, he fixed it, and that’s really hard to do.”

Sayre was without seven projected starters on Friday. Two of them, junior Chris Escobar (guard) and sophomore Jesse Nance (slot receiver/defensive back), will miss the entire season due to injuries. One of them was the team’s top returning receiver, senior Jackson Stuart (195 yards, 2 TDs on 13 catches).

John Luke Minner, a three-star prospect committed to Brown University as an edge rusher, caught the first touchdown of his career to cut KCD’s lead to 21-14 late in the third quarter. Another catch early in the fourth quarter positioned Sayre inside the Bearcats’ 10-yard line; Pennington trotted in to make it 21-all right after.

KCD didn’t rest. Tyler Wilson burst for a 71-yard gain before Caden Long scored his second TD to put the Bearcats back in front. Sayre lost senior running back Caden Jones to an injury early in the ensuing drive but answered a few minutes later; a TD run by Harrison Phillips knotted things at 28 with 5:02 to play.

The Bearcats, who returned almost every starter from a team that fell to Class A runner-up Raceland in the state quarterfinals, leaned on that experience before calling on arguably its best player: Filip Popa, a 6-foot-1 kicker, connected on a 31-yard game-winner with seven seconds to play. Sayre lost the kickoff with three seconds to go after both teams nearly went the distance without a turnover.

Even prior to last-minute injuries, there were a lot of unknowns for Sayre coming into the season. Work ethic wasn’t one of them, and while the scoreboard Friday night didn’t reflect their effort, Sayre’s staff can see where it can take them.

“Our guys had every reason to fold, and they did not,” Chad Pennington said. “I hate to lose. I hate it. I don’t believe in moral victories. But I watched how hard our guys fought. I’m just excited to go coach ’em again. As long as they continue to take ownership of what they’re doing and combine that with their work ethic, we’ll be fine.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2025 at 7:49 AM.