Leps Put Up a Fight vs. No. 1 Columbus Before Falling by 10

The La Grange football team put a scare into No. 1-ranked Columbus, before the Cardinals finally prevailed in their home opener 41-31.

For the second consecutive week La Grange saw a halftime lead slip away.

After scoring 17 unanswered points in the second quarter La Grange held a 17-13 lead at the break, but Columbus outscored the Leps 14-0 in the third quarter and then held off a late LHS comeback try.

“Credit to La Grange. They came at us. They gave us all we wanted tonight,” said Columbus head coach and former NFL standout Matt Schobel, who led Columbus to its first state title in 2024.

“We went toe-to-toe with them and we were up at the half, but we need to finish strong,” said La Grange senior linebacker Chris Supak, who recovered a pair of turnovers Friday. “We just need to learn from this.”

The Leps (0-2) are still looking for their first win of the season, but they also did some things to be excited about against the heavily favored Cardinals, which had beaten La Grange by 42 points just a season ago.

“We’ve got to stop giving up explosive plays defensively,” said La Grange head coach Kyle Cooper. “That’s a big piece of it ...We’ve gotta continue to sustain drives on the offensive side. It’s little things, but when you’ve played two good football teams like we’ve played you get exposed – but our kids played their guts out.”

La Grange senior quarterback Eli Gillum lead the Leps in rushing with 142 yards and he also threw for 154, including an 80-yard touchdown pass to Klayton Michalka, that trimmed the Columbus lead to 27-24 with six minutes left in the game.

Columbus answered with a 70-yard touchdown run by Weimar transfer Mikael Shifatu seconds later, and the Cardinals also picked off a couple of Leps’ passes late in the fourth quarter to preserve the win.

With 4:22 left in the game, a 37-yard touchdown by Columbus’ Brennan Hicks put the Cardinals up 41-24, but La Grange responded with a 97yard kick-off return by Trey Broussard.

“Before the game started, I was ready, waiting for them to kick me the ball,” Broussard said. “I feel like we could have won this, but we just have to move on.”

On the next play after Broussard’s touchdown, La Grange kicker Gio Luna executed a perfect onside kick that was caught by Dillan Johnson, but the officials said Johnson was offsides and the Leps last best chance to get back in the game was over.

Speaking of Johnson, the Leps senior running back rushed for 88 yards and two second quarter touchdowns.

Behind their beefy offensive line, the Leps mashed the See Cardinals defense, putting together several long, methodical drives. In all the Leps ran the ball a whopping 56 times for 236 yards Friday.

While La Grange was controlling the clock, Columbus was able to score quickly. The Cardinals had four scoring drives that needed only one play.

Columbus ran for 456 yards Friday, with Shifatu leading the way with 207 yards, Hicks adding 189 and big sophomore quarterback David James running for 75.

James has taken over direction of the Cardinals offense from last year’s quarterback Jack Schobel, who has switched to receiver, and led Columbus with 74 yards receiving Friday.

The La Grange defense got three important takeaways Friday. Supak recovered those two fumbles (including one on a botched kneel-down attempt by Columbus with under two minutes left in the game).

Van Hill also recovered a fumble when a Columbus return man mishandled a punt.

“It’s going to be hard to be successful when we put the ball on the ground as much as we did tonight,” Schobel said. “We didn’t execute. We didn’t play the way we wanted to on offense, but I thought our kids played really hard in the second half and I’m proud of them for that.”

Enoch Loafman, a senior transfer from Fayetteville who was on the Lions’ state basketball and baseball teams last season, handled the point after kicking duties for Columbus.

La Grange heads back on the road against another tough opponent this week. The Leps face undefeated Navarro (2-0), which beat McCallum 27-14 in their first game of the season and Floresville 55-37 last week.

“You always want that first win,” said Cooper, who isn’t interested in whatever moral victory might be claimed from playing Columbus close. “But we’re a better football team because of who we’ve played. We could be 2-0 but found out nothing about ourselves. We’re not here to play it close. We’re not here to play good games – we’re in it to win it.”