How Gatorade POTY finalist Jackson Cantwell feels heading into Show-Me Bowl

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As Nixa senior offensive tackle Jackson Cantwell wraps up a career for the history books, he’s added another piece of hardware to his collection and a shot at more as the team prepares for the Class 6 Show-Me Bowl State Championship this weekend.

With a state-leading 173 pancake tackles across 13 games this season, Cantwell was named Gatorade’s Missouri Player of the Year. The 6-foot-8 senior gave junior quarterback Adam McKnight, senior running back Jayden McCaster and company plenty of room to average 9.7 yards per play and 45.8 points per game. 

Gatorade also announced that Cantwell is a top-three finalist for its National Football Player of the Year award. He joins Tyler Atkinson, a senior linebacker from Loganville, Georgia, and Landen Williams-Callis, a junior running back from Richmond, Texas, as a candidate for the award. 

The up-and-coming tackle was honored, along with teammates McCaster and senior wide receiver/corner back Randy Flint and Nixa Track and Field athlete Hayden Mays, with a signing day at the school’s Apex Activity Center on Wednesday. 

Cantwell, who is bound for the University of Miami, didn’t mince words about being focused on the task at hand when speaking with the media following his signing. 

“Obviously (a lot is going on this week). Signing day, the state championship is coming up, I’m sure Gatorade Player of the Year will be announced really soon,” Cantwell said. “At the end of the day, I’m just — I’m glad it’s all going on, it’s a cool time of year — I’m just glad we’re playing right now because obviously there are a lot of Class 6 teams that are not … it’s really cool to get the opportunity to go do something cool for my community one last time as a Nixa athlete.”

Despite the fanfare he’s received in recent weeks, knowing that his time as a high school athlete is coming to an end, Cantwell has remained humble and focused on the team’s goals rather than his own. 

“A lot of times when players become really good, their ego gets out of whack,” head coach John Perry said. “We have experienced none of that. His parents made sure that he put Nixa first, and everything he ever did, every trip he ever took, was planned around Nixa High School and what was best for our football program. That’s very uncommon in the world that we live in.”

The four-year standout, who has impressively amassed more than 450 pancake blocks across 49 career games, says he’s feeling confident heading into the weekend, but also recognizes that Lee’s Summit won’t be an easy opponent. 

“You’ve gotta feel good, right?” Cantwell said. “We’ve had a really good team all year. We’ve stayed consistent. I think that’s the biggest thing that separated us from other teams in the state … At the end of the day, (the score is) going to be determined largely by the ground game this weekend because Lee’s Summit runs the ball probably as much as anybody. They’ve got some good players and so do we, so we’re just going to have to do what we’ve done all year and figure out a way to get this win.”

The positive, championship-minded energy surrounding the team could blossom into an accomplishment never achieved in school history – a Class 6 state title.

“There are a lot of guys that would have left to go somewhere else in my position,” Cantwell said. “I had no thought of leaving (Nixa) at all. I wanted to stay all four years here and finish it out. The main reason is because we’re going to have an opportunity on Dec. 6th at 7 p.m. to do something that’s never been done in Nixa history, so that would be something really, really cool to bring back here, and I’m focused on that right now.”

As for whether he’s done any reflecting on his career as it reaches its final game, Cantwell humorously quipped that he tries not to think about himself “at all.”

“It’s just not really what I like to do,” he said. “I don’t like to talk about myself by any means, but it’s kind of cool stuff that I’ve done whenever you look at it, and I’m hoping to add one more thing: team title in 2025. It would be a pretty cool way to cap it off, so that would mean the world to me if we could get that done.”

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: How Gatorade POTY finalist Jackson Cantwell feels heading into Show-Me Bowl

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