By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Pull out the recipe book, look under “ingredients for defeat,” and you will find the list of mistakes that the  Osceola Kowboys executed at Oviedo Friday.

The result, not surprisingly, was a 10-0 Class 5A Region 1 loss that ended the Kowboys football season at 5-6.

The Lions, 9-2, advanced to face Lakeland, a 56-35 winner over Hagerty, in the regional semifinal round next Friday.

The Kowboys turned it over three times and crippled themselves with untimely penalties while accumulating just 121 total yards, 13 in the second half.

“We did exactly what we said that we couldn’t do,” Kowboys Coach Doug Nichols said, citing penalties and turnovers as the prime reasons that Osceola’s season ended.

The Kowboys actually were penalized only six times for 31 yards, but seemingly every one of those penalties was a killer.

Osceola dominated the first period, holding the ball for 10 minutes, but it didn’t score after a holding penalty nullified running back Frank Thomas’s (14-54) 22-yard run to the Lions 5. Instead, the Kowboys punted.

As punishing as that mistake was, it paled next to a fourth-quarter penalty for having 12 defenders on the field as Oviedo, up 3-0, prepared to punt on fourth-and-5 from the OHS 42 with eight minutes to play.

The penalty resulted in an Oviedo first down, and the Lions went on to score the game’s only touchdown on quarterback Sean Long’s 1-yard sneak with 6:52 to play. Scott Harvey, whose 23-yard field goal in the third quarter followed an OHS turnover at its 5-yard line, added the PAT to make it 10-0.

Oviedo, which finished with 170 total yards, managed just 38 in the first half, when the Kowboys defense forced the Lions to punt on all three of their possessions.

OHS squandered another scoring opportunity in the second period when it fumbled at the Lions 30 with four minutes to go in the half.

“The defense played one of its best games of the year. Put it on me for not being able get our offense to move the ball better,” Nichols said after the game.

OHS defensive back Oscar McGee snuffed out a Lions scoring threat with an interception at the Kowboys 30 in the third quarter.

Kowboys quarterback Kieron Williams (5-10-51) hit his first three passes of the game, but the longest completion was 14 yards to Terrance Tatume, which also was the Kowboys’ longest play of the night.

Oviedo’s win snapped a three-game losing streak to OHS, including a 34-14 playoff loss last year.

Osceola, which met five playoff teams during the regular season, was blanked in the playoffs for the first time since a 12-0 loss against Fort Lauderdale Dillard in the 1990 sectional (now regional final) round.