October 2024

Area waterfowlers have been eagerly awaiting the opening of the Missouri North Zone duck season on Nov.

With the opportunity to sew up a share of the 2024 Grand River Conference East football championship in their inaugural season in the loop – and, it worked out, capture it outright, the Brookfield High School Bulldogs had ample reason to be focused on last week’s league contest at Milan and not shift their focus ahead to tonight’s annual “Bell Game” battle with county neighbor Marceline.Whether that motivation proved fully sufficient might be debatable, given a general lack of the ’Dogs’ usual offensive production until the final quarter, but the BHS defense made sure the zero in the team’s record would remain in place by keeping the same digit on the scoreboard all night last Friday.Thanks to the Bulldogs’ defense “pitching a shutout,” the touchdown Brookfield scored on its opening possession of the contest would have been enough to prevail, but – to be safe – it wisely pushed the ball across the Wildcats’ goal line twice in the last period, as well, punctuating an 18-0 victory.With Polo unexpectedly outscoring South Harrison at the same time, leaving all other GRCE clubs with at least two league defeats with only one week of the regular season remaining, Brookfield’s eighth-straight triumph of ’24 cemented its conference championship as an undisputed one with its 7-0 GRCE ledger.“It was a battle,” young BHS head coach Cory Luke, already in his fourth year, said of the clinching conquest.