Friends returns blocked kick for must-see walk-off win in NAIA football showdown
Faced with a seemingly hopeless situation, Friends sophomore Wetu Kalomo refused to accept reality that his team’s undefeated season was in serious jeopardy.
In a KCAC clash between two unbeaten and NAIA nationally ranked football teams on Saturday, Southwestern lined up a chip-shot field goal from 29 yards out in the closing seconds.
A game-winning score was about to happen, just not the one anybody in attendance expected.
Kalomo, a Wichita Northwest graduate, crashed through the left side of the line and stuffed the kick. The ball bounced once off the turf and hit Camari Geddis, a Derby graduate, perfectly in stride for a 77-yard blocked kick return and dramatic walk-off 37-31 win in Winfield.
“I just kept telling myself that I was going to do whatever it was going to take,” Kalomo said. “I wasn’t going to let it end like that. I was able to get skinny and get through and then just make a play.”
Friends coach Terry Harrison has seen last-play victories before, even a game in 2020 where his team blocked a kick to secure a win. But a blocked kick and return for a walk-off touchdown? That was a first.
“We didn’t play our best game and we put ourselves in such bad situations and it just felt like our world, at least our football world, was ending,” Harrison said. “When you’re in a spot like that, your only hope is to have a missed field goal and then you take your chances in overtime. But for us to block the kick, then for it to land perfectly and bounce right into our hands, well, that was a roller coaster.”
In the highly anticipated showdown between No. 21 Southwestern and No. 23 Friends, it was the Falcons who took control early in the game with an 8-yard touchdown run by Elias Pino and a 46-yard passing score from Jett Cheatham to Caden Lee for a 17-3 lead.
Behind 306 passing yards and three touchdowns from Wichita native Braden Howell, a Bishop Carroll graduate, Southwestern erased a 14-point deficit with touchdown passes to Martez Jones and Matthew Holthusen to tie the score at 24-24 late in the third quarter.
Friends answered with a touchdown of its own by K’Vonte Baker, another former City League standout quarterback at Heights, for a 31-24 lead. Then Howell responded with a 9-yard scoring run that tied the game again with 10:56 remaining in the fourth quarter.
After coming up with a defensive stand, Southwestern took over on its own 7-yard line with 8:04 remaining and nearly engineered the perfect game-winning drive.
Howell was superb on the drive, completing a 14-yard pass to Holthusen on a third-and-7 and running for 11 yards on another third-and-10. He guided Southwestern all the way to the Friends’ 12-yard line to set up the potential game-winning score, only for the heartbreaking finish.
The win also keeps Friends (7-0) in contention for the NAIA playoffs, as the next two games are at home at Adair-Austin Stadium against Evangel (Mo.) and against Bethel.
“There’s no way to simulate it, no way to recreate something like that in practice,” Harrison said. “It’s kind of like in golf when you hit a great shot, it’s what keeps you coming back. You may forget the scores over the course of your career, but I don’t think anybody is going to forget this one.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2024 at 7:18 PM.
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