Yahoo Finance Iowa high schools combine for over 200 points in state semifinal 8-man football game
St. Mary’s, Remsen and Montezuma played one of the wildest high school football games you’ll ever read about on Thursday.
The two teams combined for an Iowa state record 202 points in St. Mary’s 108-94 victory in an eight-man football state semifinal. Yes, you read that correctly. They combined for over 200 points. It was a fitting classic for two teams that each entered the game 10-0.
Those 202 points are, understandably, an Iowa state record.
Final: St. Mary’s, Remsen 108, Montezuma 94. This Eight-Player semifinal is the highest combined point total in #iahsfb history (202). Hawks set a single-team playoff scoring record and advance to next week’s final.
🏈 https://t.co/dTu0lf7gxG pic.twitter.com/pov1RTHqwN— IHSAA (@IHSAA) November 12, 2020
The box score, which you can view in full here, is a delightful adventure. The lowest-scoring quarter was the second quarter, when the teams combined for just 33 points. They rebounded in the third quarter with a 66-point quarter and then scored 54 points in the fourth quarter.
St. Mary’s had to pull off a comeback to get the win too. Montezuma led 74-66 with 1:44 to go in the third before St. Mary’s running back Brenden Fisch scored a 22-yard TD and his team got the two-point conversion to tie.
Fisch then scored with just under 10 minutes to go in the fourth quarter to give St. Mary’s an 82-74 lead.
The star of the game for St. Mary’s was quarterback Blaine Harpenau. He was 11-of-22 passing for four touchdowns and an interception and rushed an incredible 40 times for 354 yards and four touchdowns. St. Mary’s ran 88 offensive plays.
While Harpenau scored eight touchdowns himself, that was a total dwarfed by Montezuma QB Eddie Burgess. Burgess was 34-of-60 passing for 689 yards and nine touchdowns and one interception.
He also rushed eight times for 24 yards and scored four rushing touchdowns. Only one of Montezuma’s TDs — a 55-yard passing TD by Owen Cook — wasn’t scored or thrown by Burgess.
But Burgess’ interception ended up proving costly. Montezuma was trailing by eight with just over six minutes to go when Alex Schroeder picked Burgess off and ran it back 35 yards for a touchdown and a 101-86 lead. Montezuma was never within two possessions again after that TD.
The game took just over four hours — an eternity for a football game without television timeouts. St. Mary’s will next play in the state championship game on Thursday, Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. CT.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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