On Friday, Nov. 14, the Seminole football team traveled west to face Heritage Hall in the first round of the 2025 Class 3A playoffs. The #1 seed Chargers defeated the #4 seed Chieftains, capitalizing on five Seminole turnovers for a 52-34 win. With the loss, the Mean Green finish their 2025 campaign 7-4 overall, fourth in district 3A-2, with a second straight playoff appearance.

Heritage Hall opened the postseason on offense, scoring on a 3-yard touchdown run three minutes in. After an SHS interception on their first possession, the Chargers needed only two plays to go 78 yards and extend the lead to 14-0 at 7:52. The Chieftains responded with a five-minute drive capped by QB Donavin Garfield’s 1-yard rushing touchdown, making it 14-6 Chargers.

Unfortunately for the Chieftains, that was the closest the game would be at any point for the rest of the night. Heritage Hall would quickly score twice more before the end of the first quarter and then used two Seminole turnovers to extend their lead even further in the second period. By the time intermission had hit, the #1 seed Chargers led 38-6 and had forced four Chieftain turnovers.

The beginning of the second half was much of the same for the home team, scoring on their first two offensive possessions to obtain the biggest lead of the night, 52-6, midway through the third. The Chieftains would respond late in the quarter on QB Donavin Garfield’s second rushing touchdown of the night, cutting the score to 52-12 heading into the final period of play.

The fourth quarter saw Seminole get its senior leaders involved on offense, the defense force three straight three-and-outs, and the Chieftains cut into the deficit. With 9:45 remaining, QB Donavin Garfield threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to WR Tre Johnson, 52-20 Heritage Hall. Then Garfield struck again just three minutes later, this time with a 45-yard touchdown scamper, 52-28 Chargers. After the defense forced the third straight three-andout, Garfield would find WR Mason Bennett on 3rd-and-29 for a 51-yard score with just under two minutes left to play.

After the last touchdown of Seminole’s season, the Chargers would kneel the clock out, ending the Chieftain’s 2025 campaign with a 52-34 loss in the first round of the playoffs. Here is what Head Coach Mike Snyder had to say when asked about the playoff game, the season as a whole, and next season. “Well, I think we accomplished a lot. I thought our kids learned a lot. You can go back and look at how we played in those ten regular-season games; we played well. You get into a playoff game and you make a lot of mistakes again, like we did last year, turn the ball over, and you cannot do that against a good football team. They deserve to win; they played a lot better than we did. We got some kids coming back, and we are just excited to start getting ready for that here in a couple of weeks.”

Even though Seminole’s season ended, some pretty big statistical milestones were hit on Friday night. To start, QB Donavin Garfield hit 50+ total touchdowns for the season, finishing with an even 27 passing and 27 rushing scores in 2025. The two main wideouts Garfield was finding all season and other statistical standouts were WR Jay Ladd and WR Mason Bennett. With Bennett’s 171 receiving yards and Ladd’s 93 receiving yards on Friday, the pair became the first duo in Seminole High School football history to reach 1,000 receiving yards each in a season.

The Chieftains finish 2025 with their second straight 7-4 season, a second straight playoff appearance, and get Coach Snyder up to 399 career wins. Seminole Chieftain football action will be back in August of 2026.