Grain Valley Eagles score big with home shutout of Suburban Conference foe Belton

The Grain Valley Eagles made the most of their time in the spotlight Friday, dominating possession to clinch a share of the Suburban White Conference football championship.

Grain Valley’s 22-0 home win over Belton also secured the Eagles a No. 1 seed in the Missouri District 7 playoffs in their first season of Class 5 football.

“We knew coming in this was going to be a big statement game,” Grain Valley quarterback Cole Keller said. “They played really well against the team that we lost to last week, so we knew that we could get back that loss with this one.”

Belton (7-1, 4-1 Suburban White) entered Friday night’s showdown assured a share of the conference championship and no worse than a No. 2 seed.

Grain Valley (8-1, 4-1) was already assured a No. 3 seed, but Friday’s victory helped the Eagles avoid a semifinal matchup against Raytown, which also shares the division title. Raytown defeated Truman Friday and now holds the No. 3 seed.

“We very well may match up again (with Belton), we may match up with Raytown,” Grain Valley coach David Allie said. “The three top teams are going to face each other again, and all three games were really good games.”

Grain Valley barely broke a sweat Friday. The Eagles ground down the Pirates’ defense and quickly dispatched the Belton offense whenever it got on the field.

“A lot of times we don’t worry about that, just from the fact of you score when you can score and the offense’s job is to score points,” Allie said. “But tonight we knew that we had to grind it out because they’re a grind-it-out team too, and the more time we can take off the clock, the more situations they’re put to do things they’re not ready to do or not as good at.”

Grain Valley’s offense faltered briefly late in the third quarter, and punter Parker Bosserman got in on the action. Set up just inside Belton’s half of the field, Bosserman was called to pin the visitors deep. The senior deposited the ball at the Belton 1-yard line, and an ensuing unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty pushed the Pirates even closer to their own end zone.

When Belton was forced to punt a short time later, the Pirates’ punter stepped out of the back of the end zone for a safety and 15-0 Grain Valley lead.

“That was huge,” Allie said.

The Eagles chewed up clock behind a powerful run game from running backs Jaxon Wyatt and Hunter Newsom. The pair split the opening two touchdowns, both in short-yardage situations.

Keller, too, moved well on the ground. His 54-yard run set up the Eagles’ second touchdown, and he punched in one of his own with nine minutes remaining on a quarterback sneak.

With the No. 1 seed secured, the Eagles earned themselves a bye week ahead of the postseason. Not that they’ll be relaxing much.

“We can take a lot of our weaknesses within our position groups and we can now fix those,” Keller said. “We can really focus on some of the small things we may not have been able to focus on when we’re preparing for a team.

“We have the whole week where we can really break down what we’ve done over the past nine weeks, and really fix it and seriously grow in this next week.”

This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 10:36 PM.