Contest wild, entertaining

• By SCOTT HOTARD
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 6, 2009

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Often it’s been on the final Thursday of the regular season. Other times it’s been in the state playoffs.

It’s the Parkview Baptist-Redemptorist rivalry. It’s unpredictable, entertaining and – generally speaking — down to the wire.

They met again Thursday night, again on the final week of the regular season. Again with state rankings. Again with a district championship on the line.

To the wire? Not this time.

Third-ranked Parkview rolled to a 44-27 victory at Majella Field, knocking off No. 2 Redemptorist in the District 7-3A title game. But the score and the stakes were only half the story.

Here’s a new one even for this series:

-- Nearly 300 yards in penalties.

-- Two player ejections.

-- A stoppage in play when a linesman lost his shoe.

-- A stoppage in play as players, coaches and officials searched for a Parkview lineman’s missing pinky.

Luke Thornton didn’t lose his pinky, for the record. He just put a scare into everyone.

On a 17-yard run by Adam Roethele late in the third quarter, Thornton got his left hand tangled in a Redemptorist defender’s facemask. He came off the field with blood spewing from his pinky.

A play later, the game halted.