JONESVILLE — West St. John scored on a touchdown run with 9:41 to go in the fourth quarter as the third-seeded Rams held on for a 35-28 win over the 11th-seeded Block Bears Friday night in the quarterfinals of the LHSAA Class 1A Playoffs.

Raymond Plummer had a pair of 1-yard touchdown runs, and Cameron Everett had touchdown runs of 4 and 2 yards for Block. However, the Bears’ special teams gave up a pair of long kickoff returns for touchdowns by the Rams’ Jeremy Jackson in the first half, and that proved to be costly. Jackson had kickoff returns of 82 and 65 yards.

“We knew he was good. We watched him on film. He’s a special player,” head coach Benny Vault said about Jackson. “The second one, we tried to kick it out of bounds, but he picked it up. We work on that every day, but they beat us to it.”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Bears also missed an extra point after Plummer’s first touchdown at the 3:09 mark of the first quarter that would have tied the game at 7-7 and failed to convert on a two-point conversion run after Everett’s first touchdown run of the game with 10:20 to go in the second quarter that would have made it a 14-14 game.

Block quarterback Trevor Vault did not have a single pass attempt. All of the Bears’ yards were on the ground – 367 of them, to be exact. And they had 24 first downs and just one penalty for five yards.

Everett led the way with 140 yards on 23 carries. Plummer had 24 carries for 132 yards and Austin Danzy had 11 carries for 88 yards. However, three lost fumbles were also a factor.

“We had some unfortunate turnovers in crucial situations,” coach Vault said. “I think we won everything except the final score. We played a physical game. We moved the ball at will.”

After a fourth-down stop late in the ball game, Block had one last opportunity to perhaps win the ball game. The Bears were in position to get the ball in the end zone, only to fumble it at the West St. John 2-yard line and the Rams recovered as time expired.

“It was a back-and-forth game. We played real hard. Both teams strapped it in,” Vault said. “I’m so proud of the guys.”

Block, the District 3-1A champion, finished with a 7-6 overall record.