It’s not often that a loss is a victory, but in a way that was the case for the Greene County High School football team on Friday night at Linduska Field in Jefferson. The Rams fell in the regular season football finale to OA-BCIG (Ida Grove) by a 34-28 final, but they not only qualified for the Class 2A playoff field, but did so as the number three seed among the four qualifiers from District 8. Trailing 34-22 with just over two minutes left in the game the Rams scored a touchdown to close the gap to six points. OA-BCIG was able to run out the clock and win the game. The Rams would have missed the playoff field had they not scored the last points of the contest and had the Falcons put any more points on the board.

Kuemper Catholic (9-0, 6-0) won the District 8 title and OA-BCIG (6-3, 5-1) finished second. Red Oak, Shenandoah, and the Rams tied for third place in the district with 3-3 records, but since only four teams advance to the postseason, the Iowa High School Athletic Association used tie-breaking procedures to determine the third and four playoff qualifiers. The first tie-breaker is the results of head-to-head competition, but the tie couldn’t be broken that way since the Rams defeated RO, Shenandoah defeated the Rams, and RO defeated Shenandoah. Next is the 13-point differential average using 13 points as the greatest margin of victory or defeat and dividing the number of points accumulated by the six district games played. Greene Count;y finished with a 0.17 point differential average while both RO and Shenandoah were at 0.00. The Rams are the third seed from the district and RO is fourth.

Greene County (4-5) plays District 7 runner-up North Polk (6-3) at Alleman on Wednesday, Oct. 24 in the opening round of the playoffs at 7 p.m. in a game that can be heard on KGRA 98.9 FM with coverage beginning at 6 p.m. The contest will be a re-match of a week two meeting won 21-6 in Alleman by the Comets. The winner meets either Kuemper Catholic (9-0) or Gilbert (4-4) in a second round contest on Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. Complete playoff pairings can be viewed at the Iowa High School Athletic Association website.