MONETT — Carthage running back Tyler Mueller tends to show out in preseason football jamborees.
Friday night was no different for the senior as his Carthage team partook in a jamboree at Monett High School with host Cubs, Carl Junction and Nevada. Mueller tallied three touchdowns on runs of 29, 25 and two yards as the Tigers' first-team offensive unit registered eight touchdowns in 24 plays combined against Monett and Nevada.
Mueller, of course, earned his starting role at running back last year with a breakout performance in a jamboree at Carl Junction. He went on to rush for 987 yards and 15 touchdowns in his junior campaign.
"Tyler is the exact same player he was last year at this time, if not better," Carthage coach Jon Guidie said. "He was great tonight. But I'm telling you, our offensive line, tight end and our H-back, they made life easy tonight for Tyler, too. And he made some nice runs after contact tonight, but those guys up front did a great job of opening those holes for him."
And Mueller was just one of the weapons the Carthage offense used to its advantage.
Among the familiar faces adding to the night's highlight reel were junior quarterback Patrick Carlton and senior tight end Alex Martini, who connected for a 40-yard touchdown pass in the Tigers' session against Nevada. Marcus Huntley, a senior who played primarily as the kicker a year ago, provided the first score against Nevada on a 17-yard touchdown run.
Perhaps the biggest surprise from Carthage's showing was Bobby Kendrick. Listed as a 5-foot-11, 170-pound running back on the roster, Kendrick took several snaps at quarterback and ended up throwing for two touchdowns — a 20-yard pass to Silas Templeton against Monett and a 40-yard pass to Huntley against Nevada.
"Bobby does good things for us, and you saw a bit of that tonight," Guidie said. "We're going to get a heavy dose of Patrick at QB once the season begins, but we wanted to save him tonight since we know what we have with him. As you saw last year with (former starting quarterback Zeke Sappington) and the way he went down in the middle of the season, you have to have the next guy ready. So that's what we did with Bobby tonight. We got him some snaps and some experience, and he played well."
Defensively, Carthage's night got off to a bit of a slower start. In the Tigers' 12 defensive snaps against Monett, the Cubs tallied 80 yards and scored a pair of touchdowns — one coming on a 25-yard pass from quarterback Karter Brink to Cole McCollough and another coming on an eight-yard pass from Brink to Trevon Prince.
"I thought Karter played very confident the entire night," Monett coach Derrek Uhl said. "He was seeing the field really well and finding his receivers. And, you know, I don't think he was sacked the entire night, which says a lot about the performance our offensive line had. We also have probably six receivers who can catch the football. So going into tonight, we wanted to throw it a bit. And we ended up seeing some big catches."
The Carthage defense bounced back later in the night against Nevada, surrendering no touchdowns and just one first down in 12 plays.
"We weren't as consistent as I probably would have liked us to be, but there were some times when I thought we competed very well," Guidie said. "Nevada's an entirely different offense to defend than Monett … but if you take away a couple of those big passes Monett had, we didn't have too bad of a night defensively."
Nevada coach Wes Beachler said team had a handful of starters out with "non-football injuries."
"I thought we competed hard despite being shorthanded in a couple areas," Beachler said. "The reason we're coming down to this jamboree is because we want to see teams like Carthage and Carl Junction early. We want to go up against teams that are bigger in class and play a good brand of football. We got to see that and we got some jitters out of the way. So we'll just keep improving from here."
Both Carthage and Carl Junction, members of the Central Ozark Conference who will meet in Week 2 of the regular season, opted to play their reserves against one another in the final session of the jamboree.
Carthage will open the season on Friday at Nixa, game time 7:00 pm.

-Jared Porter, Globe Sports Online