Van-Far wasn’t in the right position at key moments at North Callaway.

Van-Far at North Callaway Photo Gallery

The Class 1 No. 6 Indians lost 42-22 at their Eastern Missouri Conference foe after never truly recovering from a 14-point spurt by the Thunderbirds in the final four minutes of the first half. Van-Far (6-2) led 16-14 with six minutes left in the first half but a muffed kickoff return preceded a North Callaway touchdown.

Down 28-16 at halftime, Van-Far head coach Lucas Gibson said the Indians being unable to recover two onside kicks hurt them on the scoreboard. After going down 20-16, Van-Far allowed a kick to bounce over and off them into a North Callaway recovery. The Thunderbirds (7-1) managed to score a touchdown after that moment to further put Van-Far in a bad position.

“It’s little bitty things,” Gibson said. “Gaven (Gaston) had a touchdown fall right off his fingertips. Sometimes, the ball doesn’t go your way. We played better than what the scoreboard shows, but we put our defense in bad positions, giving them short fields.”

Gibson felt like Van-Far was playing on its own side of the field most of the night and really did play the entire third quarter on that side of the field. North Callaway only had to go about 20 yards after that kickoff recovery and then 15 yards late in the third quarter following a stop on fourth down.

In the second half, Gibson said the defense adjusted well to North Callaway but then couldn’t move the ball on offense. Jaiden Galbreath finished with 187 yards and two touchdowns on 24 carries for North Callaway and Collin Moore ran for 101 yards on 14 carries on the edge to account for much of 326 yards on the ground. Coltyn O’Neal threw for 77 yards and two touchdowns on 7-for-11 passing and was able to roll out and complete passes to add another element to their offense.

“We were committed to stopping run so they got a few pass plays,” Gibson said. “We were going to live with those. We were beat on the edge quite a bit. We haven’t been beat on the edge all year so hats off to them for doing that.”

Tyson Douglas ran 43 yards for a touchdown to give Van-Far its final lead of the game. Douglas finished with 140 yards on 14 carries, but the Indians had 170 rushing yards as a team.

Gaston had a busy night going for catches down field, coming up with 90 yards and a 14-yard touchdown pass on seven receptions. He caught a 26-yard pass on the same drive as his touchdown catch and a 33-yard catch that set up quarterback Reece Culwell for a five-yard keeper run to put the deficit at 36-22 near the beginning of the fourth quarter.

“They saw what we did to Wright City last week, and they stopped it,” Gibson said. “Obviously, they were going to stop the run since we had 403 yards on the ground last week. We were trying to get them to back off with Gaven, and we had a few plays that did it.”

North Callaway sealed the game by recovering a Van-Far fumble in the end zone with about eight minutes left in the game. That also followed an interception by Isaac Wardlow, which was Van-Far’s second pick of the game.

Van-Far has a shorter week schedule as it hosts Scotland County (4-4) at 7 p.m. Thursday for its regular season finale.

“It’s little bitty minute things that could’ve gone a little different for a different game,” Gibson said. “That’s football.”