By DAVID COLBURN

News editor

Not all Trojans are created equal, as Hillsboro found out Friday, losing to their counterparts from Southeast of Saline 42-0 at Reimer Field.

Hillsboro won the opening coin toss and little else. Southeast quarterback Cody Schlesener bolted 63 yards for a touchdown on the third play of the game.

Hillsboro fumbled away the ensuing kickoff, and SES needed just two plays to score, with Kayden Beshar weaving through Hillsboro defenders for a 21-yard score. With less than two minutes gone in the game, Hillsboro trailed 0-14.

The home Trojans responded with their best drive of the night. Starting at the 29-yard line, Justus Hilliard racked up yards on the ground and through the air, picking up 25 yards on five runs and completing passes to David Dick, Jakob Hanschu, and Jacob Funk to move to the Southeast 13. An incomplete pass on fourth-and-3 killed the drive and turned the ball back over to Southeast.

Beshar finished an 87-yard drive with a 12-yard touchdown run, and the conversion put Southeast up 21-0.

Southeast added two more touchdowns on offense in the second quarter, a 61-yard pass to Kyler Sager and a 15-yard Schlesener run.

Down 35-0 with 1 minute, 36 seconds left in the half, Hillsboro went to the passing game, with disastrous results. A first-down completion to Dick lost 3 yards, then Southeast’s Ben Murray intercepted Hilliard’s next pass for a touchdown. Sager’s sixth extra point made the score 42-0 and proved to be the last points scored.

“Getting down in that hole at the beginning of the game really killed our momentum,” head coach Lance Sawyer said.

While his players were in position to make plays, Sawyer said they too often didn’t come through.

“We need to learn to compete, we need to learn to finish plays,” Sawyer said. “We didn’t do either one. We had people in the right spots, we just didn’t finish the tackle, or finish the drive we started. We just didn’t finish anything.”

Hillsboro will wrap up the season at home against Council Grove. Both teams lost by huge margins to district foes Hesston and Southeast of Saline.

“We have to focus on playing together,” Sawyer said. “That’s pretty much what we’ve got to do. We don’t have anything else to play for but each other.”