Chaffee football drops nail-biter to Confluence Prep

The Chaffee Red Devils football team suffered a narrow 22-16 loss to the Titans of Confluence Prep on Friday night at Chaffee High School.

Confluence Prep lived up to the Titans nickname as it was physically larger than most of the Red Devils' players. Chaffee struck first with a field goal on its opening possession, but Confluence answered back with a one-play touchdown and two-point conversion to take an 8-3 lead.

The Red Devils' defense forced a fourth down, and the Titans lined up to punt. However, a fake punt tricked Chaffee, and Confluence walked in for a touchdown to take a 14-3 lead after a failed two-point conversion.

Fortunately for the Red Devils, their next punt was downed inside the one-yard line. Chaffee then forced a fumble and recovered it in the end zone for a touchdown, bringing the score to 14-10.

Confluence drove the field and scored a touchdown to close the half with a 22-10 lead. Chaffee head coach Jack Altermatt said despite the rough game his team fought hard and made plays.

“We fought for all four quarters. We’ve got a lot of young guys that are just having to learn, and then we have some other guys that didn't have a ton of experience coming into the season, so it's probably taken us to this point to kind of get our feet under us,” Altermatt said. “Logan Horton came back today, which was good, and he broke out a couple of really nice runs that helped out. Our defense played really well and they did that last week, too, so hopefully that train continues.”

One of those plays Horton made was a 50-yard rush for a touchdown to close the gap to 22-16 early in the third quarter. The two teams battled defensively for the remainder of the third and most of the fourth before Chaffee started driving late in the fourth.

The Red Devils' ground game moved the ball all the way down inside the Titans' 20-yard line with about three minutes to go. Unfortunately for Chaffee, back-to-back penalties and what could be considered a controversial face mask no-call upset the fans and stalled the drive.

Confluence only had to kneel the ball out after stopping the Devils on fourth down to take home the win.

Altermatt compared his team to his golf game saying mistakes happen and he and the team could not recover.

“When you're playing golf, you're fighting against the course and yourself, mainly yourself. I feel like sometimes we're like some golf team out here just fighting against ourselves, and it's like a tough one off the first tee block, and we have to figure out how to recover,” Altermatt. “That’s kind of where we're at, we’re slowly getting a little bit better, learning some things and hopefully getting everybody healthy.”

Chaffee will travel to O’Fallon to take on the Eagles from Veritas Christian Academy High School at 7 p.m. Oct. 11.