The ES-M Spartans have been on a mission from day one. The veteran-laden team was knocked out in the the first round of the playoffs last year. The Spartans made sure it was not a repeat performance this year.

After getting off to a slow start, ES-M outscored Carthage 27-6 in the second half en route to a 40-6 victory

Running back Jordan Barton made the decisive play in the first half, scoring on a 50 yard TD run to put ES-M up 13-0. The Spartans would never look back from there.

Barton finished with two touchdowns while wideout Bobby Campese also had two scores.

ES-M head coach Kevin DeParde says nerves may have gotten the best of his team early on, but the game was a valuable experience for them.

"They'll get a lot of momentum out of this. I think they know what to expect now," DeParde says. "When you know what to expect, you can prepare a littler better emotionally, and I think that that was the issue for us tonight, in not getting out of the gate real quickly, was that emotionally we weren't real stable. But we did as the game went on and settled down and put some points on the board so we'll learn from that. That will carry us a long way next week."

The Spartans move to 8-0 on the year. They will face Indian River next week in the Class A semi-finals. Carthage finishes the season at 2-6.