By Andrew Cato, ShowMe Times Sports Editor

NEW MADRID -- The SEMO Conference championship has been elusive for the Dexter Bearcats in the last few seasons, but with a 53-7 blowout win over the New Madrid County Central Eagles, the ‘Cats were able to claim their first Conference title since the 2005 season, and the 20th Conference title in the history of the DHS football program.

Coach Aaron Pixley, winning his third Conference title as DHS head coach, was extremely proud of his team’s win, despite their slow start.

“It has been a few years. I’m proud of my boys, they really wanted it,” Pixley said of the Conference title. “They did a good job of going out and playing hard and well all night. We needed to wake up a bit early in the game, but once we got off we played well.”

“Once the game got going, the defense played extremely well, and the offense played well, we just played a great game as a team. Our kickoff coverage was very good - Kennett ran a kickoff on us last week - and we did a much better job tonight. New Madrid is very dangerous whenever they get into space, and we were a little worried about the kickoff team.”

Quarterback Cody Stevens (8-13 for 175 yards & 2 TD’s passing; 11 attempts for 93 yards and 1 TD rushing) broke the 1,000 yard mark through the air AND on the ground in the contest. Stevens is now the 11th member of the DHS 1,000 Yard Club, which includes his father, Nate Stevens (1985 & 1986).

“We did good tonight,” Stevens said after the game. “At first we got stuffed, but once we started rolling we were solid. The running game was good, and the passing game was really good tonight. We did really well on defense. It’s the Conference championship - we haven’t had one of those since ’05, and we came out tonight and really wanted it.”

Tyler Miller had an outstanding performance against the Eagles on both sides of the ball. The senior led the Bearcats receiving corps with 4 catches for 91 yards and a touchdown, but he actually covered more ground catching passes from New Madrid’s quarterback: Miller picked off Austin Lynn (3-10 for 59 yards, 5 INT) four times in the contest, returned them for 102 yards, and found the endzone twice.

“He’d look pretty good to our side, so I just read his eyes,” Miller commented. “He usually only had one receiver on a side to throw to, so I just broke on the ball.”

“Tyler was great on defense, picking three or four footballs and taking two in for scores. In the passing game, he and Cody were really clicking tonight, so that was good.” Pixley said. “He had a good game, among others - there were some other guys on the team that had great games, and this Conference championship is well-deserved.”

Defensively, the ‘Cats were led by Alex Cliff with 11 tackles. Ryan Joyner chipped in nine - three for negative yardage - while Zach Watson recorded an INT, four tackles, and a sack for an 11 yard loss.

New Madrid’s defense did a great job of slowing down Dexter’s rushing attack, holding the ‘Cats to only 186 yards - well under the team’s 317 yards-per-game average - during the contest. Coach Pixley’s team adjusted well, and had great success in the passing game.

“We kind of made a concerted effort this week in our passing game; felt like we just needed to work on it a bit, and we did a good job,” he said. “New Madrid did a good job of stacking the box and bringing people hard off the edge, doing a good job against our counter-trey game. They brought us down from behind for the most part, and we’ll have to come up with something for that next week.”

The Bearcats must now look ahead to the Fredericktown Black Cats. With Fredericktown’s 63-14 stomping of Kennett on Friday night, the winner of the contest will be crowned the Class 3 District 1 Champion.


The Bearcats are looking for their first back-to-back district titles since 1986 & 1987 - head coach Aaron Pixley’s junior and senior seasons at DHS.

“They’re a tough, physical team,” Pixley said. “They’ve got a quarterback that runs the ball very, very well, and they like to spread you out and run the ball on you. You’ve got to play well against those guys. It’s going to be a big week for us - the physicality of that team, it being senior night - we’re going to have to be extremely focused and ready to go.”


The Class 3 District 1 Championship will be decided next Thursday (October 27) at Charles Bland Stadium in Dexter.


Kickoff is scheduled for 7:00 p.m.

For a full breakdown of the game’s stats, click here.