St. Pauls, Midway meet for Southeastern title
ST. PAULS — As the season has progressed, all signs have pointed more and more to Friday as a hugely important game in the Southeastern Athletic Conference.
Now Week 11 is here and the stakes could not be higher for a regular-season game.
When St. Pauls and Midway face off at 7 p.m. Friday at G.S. Kinlaw Stadium, one team will be 48 minutes of football away from a conference championship. Whichever team wins Friday’s matchup will win the Southeastern title outright.
“We want to keep our standard,” St. Pauls coach Mike Setzer said. “We’re used to being in games like this, we’re used to playing for conference championships, things like that. Our atmosphere around our team is keeping our standard. I think a lot of times when you play in games like this, it’s important to do what you do, and if you’re not, if you make the game bigger than what it is, you end up doing things that you might not do well.
Midway (8-1, 4-0 Southeastern), under first-year head coach Barrett Sloan, enters with a seven-game winning streak since a nonconference loss to James Kenan on Aug. 30. The Raiders have outscored the competition 185-54 in four Southeastern games.
“I think they’re confident in what they do. They run the wing-T (offense) and a 4-4 defense,” Mike Setzer said. “I think they use their weapons like they need to, and I think that they don’t try to get outside their wheelhouse and they play to their strengths. That’s impressive that they’re committed to what they believe in as well.”
St. Pauls (7-2, 4-0 Southeastern) has won four straight games since the start of conference play, each by 38 points or more. The Bulldogs have scored 41 points or more in each of those games and allowed six or less, with just 12 total points allowed in the span.
The Bulldogs’ large senior class will be recognized before the game to commemorate senior night.
Midway has scored 37.7 points per game in its wing-T offense, led by the rushing performances of Gehemiah Blue (778 rushing yards, 10 touchdowns), Ke’Mari McNeil (642 rushing yards, 11 touchdowns) and Nathue Myles (547 rushing yards, five touchdowns).
“The thing about the wing-T is it’s patience on defense, because the wing-T is a patient offense,” Mike Setzer said. “You can’t get out of shape, if they don’t hit a big run, or if they do hit a big run. You’ve got to continue to stay patient with that, because it’s an offense that’s designed to kind of almost jab you to death, and after jabbing you to death they hit big plays.”
Tanner Williams has thrown for 586 yards and seven touchdowns for Midway, with McNeil (192 receiving yards, three touchdowns) as the leading receiver.
Linemen Wyatt Scott (79 tackles) and Thomas Perez (68 tackles, 11 tackles for loss) lead the way for a Raiders defense holding the opposition to 17.4 points per game.
“They try to bring the fight to the party quick,” Mike Setzer said. “They like to crowd the box, they like to be in your face, they like to play aggressive football, they like to blitz a lot. That just shows that they’re confident in what they do, and so I think it should make for an interesting football game, because we’re confident in what we do.”
The Raiders defense will face a St. Pauls offense averaging 37.7 points per game, led by quarterback Theophilus Setzer (1,097 passing yards, 13 passing touchdowns; 731 rushing yards, five rushing touchdowns), running back Yoshua McBryde (1,357 rushing yards, 12 rushing touchdowns) and receiver Jakhi Purcell (450 receiving yards, seven receiving touchdowns).
St. Pauls is seeking its first conference championship in football since the fall 2021 season, which was its second straight.
St. Pauls has scored 51 or more points in all three games against the Raiders since the schools became conference opponents in 2021, including a 62-22 Bulldogs win last year. St. Pauls leads the all-time series 6-1.
Red Springs at West Bladen
Elsewhere in the Southeastern, the other two in-conference matchups pit teams that are out of playoff contention and will be playing their season finales on Friday. In one of these games, West Bladen hosts Red Springs at 7 p.m. Friday.
West Bladen (2-7, 1-3 Southeastern) ended a three-game skid with a 40-20 win at Fairmont last week.
Hezekiah Blanks-Adams has rushed for 410 yards and six touchdowns and Ahmarie White has 349 rushing yards and three scores for the Knights. Linebacker Justin Spaulding (60 tackles) and defensive lineman Wendell Way (47 tackles) lead the Knights defensively.
Red Springs (2-7, 2-2 Southeastern) enters the finale third in the Southeastern Athletic Conference standings and can solidify that finish with a win. The Red Devils lost 46-8 to Midway last week, but won two of their previous three games by beating Fairmont and Clinton after an 0-5 start.
Red Springs won last year’s meeting 32-18 in a matchup essentially amounting to a playoffs play-in game. West Bladen had won the previous two years, Red Springs had won the five before that spanning from 2011-19, and the all-time series is tied 8-8.
Fairmont at Clinton
Fairmont seeks to avoid a winless season as the Golden Tornadoes travel to Clinton for a 7 p.m. kickoff Friday.
The Golden Tornadoes (0-9, 0-4 Southeastern) have previously had just one winless season in program history in 2003. Fairmont lost 40-20 to West Bladen last week, with the Knights pulling away in the second half after a back-and-forth first half.
Clinton (1-8, 1-3 Southeastern) hasn’t fared too much better this season, falling on harder times after reaching the 2A state championship game last season. The Dark Horses beat West Bladen 40-12 on Oct. 11 for their only win, losing the last two weeks to Red Springs, 36-34, and St. Pauls, 49-6.
Clinton has won all eight all-time meetings against the Golden Tornadoes, including a 60-8 win last season.
Sports editor Chris Stiles can be reached at 910-816-1977 or by email at cstiles@robesonian.com. You can follow him on X at @StilesOnSports.