River's Beau Charlton on senior night.

The Pilots played host to Frontier on Friday night, October 24, in Hannibal and were looking for their fifth win on the season and a berth in the postseason. Frontier was also looking to keep their playoff hopes alive. With both teams fired up things looked to be going in River’s favor early as they scored on their second possession of the game to go up 6-0 on a 7-yard run by senior Lucas Dennis. The extra point attempt was no good which proved to be the difference in the contest.

The Cougars answered on their next possession when they put together a 76-yard, 14-play drive that ate up nearly eight minutes of clock. The big play of the drive was a 29-yard pass play from quarterback True King to Davyn Ferrell which moved the ball to the 8-yard line and a 2-yard run by Caleb Kirkpatrick moved it to the six. King then found a wide open Austyn Kephart in the end zone for a 6-yard touchdown to tie the contest score at six. Ferrell’s point after kick was right down the middle making it 7-6 Frontier.

That was the end of the scoring for the night as both teams’ defense held tight the rest of the way. The win ended a 13-game losing streak to River and guaranteed the Cougars a berth in the postseason for the third time in the past four years.

A Cougar defense that had allowed 129 points over their last three games came up huge in leading them to their fourth victory of the season.

The Pilot defense was able to come up big though as they forced King and the Cougar offense into three incomplete passes in a row to turn the ball back over on downs to the River offense.

Frontier limited the Pilots to just 196 total yards of offense and came up with huge stops and turnovers when they needed them the most.

The Pilots suffered an interception in the endzone and also failed to capitalize in the red zone as the Cougars defense held strong.

Dennis ran the ball 13 times for 55 yards for River while Blue completed 10-of-19 pass attempts for 77 yards.

River slipped to 4-6 with the loss and will travel to Steubenville Catholic 7-3 for a Region 27 contest against the number 4 ranked team at Harding Stadium.