Over the last two seasons, Owensville Dutchmen football lineman Jarett Payne has been a constant threat to make a big play on either the offensive or defensive lines.

He will have four more years of football in his future at the college level as he will continue his gridiron career over in St. Charles for the Lions of Lindenwood University.

During his junior season in orange and black, Payne spent the majority of his snaps on the offensive side of the football.

Protecting former Dutchmen quarterback Wyatt Ellis, Payne and the rest of the Owensville offense line helped their skill guys pile up nearly 6,900 yards of offense with 2,473 coming through the air and another 4,222 rushing yards on the ground.

In three games on the defensive line in the fall of 2018, Jarett had solo tackles against Potosi, St. James in the district semifinals and Eldon in the district championship game. His lone tackle-for-loss also came in the late-October showdown against St. James.

Seeing Ellis and a number of other solid senior linemen graduate, Payne knew he had to step up his senior leader with the most experience on the line.

He also saw action on both sides of the line in all 10 games during his final season of Dutchmen football.

Securing at least one solo tackle in all 10 contests as a Dutchmen lineman, Payne finished his senior season with 41 total tackles broken down by 23 solo stops and 18 assists.

Jarett also racked up 4.5 tackles for loss recording a pair in two games.

He put up two tackles-for-loss twice in games against Cuba’s Wildcats and Pacific’s Indians.

He also recorded a season and career-high seven total tackles against those two previously mentioned opponents.

Ending his senior season with two sacks, Payne dropped the quarterback in the backfield against Cuba, St. James and Union.

Against St. James and Union, he was credited with half-a-sack.

As a part of Owensville’s 34-29 Gasconade County Bowl victory over Hermann last fall, Payne recovered his lone fumble of his senior year against the visiting Bearcats.

Payne won’t be the only former Dutchmen donning Lindenwood black and gold.

Spending his first two years of high school football at OHS, Asa Baker finished out his high school gridiron career at Reeds Spring for the Wolves before his freshman season last fall at Lindenwood.

“It’ll be cool to see Asa (Baker) again and perhaps be on the same line with him after all these years,” Payne said.