| By: Rick Sherrod - |
In fact, considering the spectacle at AT&T Stadium on the third “long weekend” of December 2014 . . . might not those citizens of the ancient world look with more than a little envy at the unequalled smorgasbord of sports entertainment provided for all of us last week?
The day before this year’s football finale began, Max Thompson’s Prep Rally column, “Why you should be watching the Texas high school football championships” (Dec. 17, 2014, http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/why-you-should-be-watching-the-texas-high-school-football-championships-011250009.html) drew attention to the popularity of the three-day convocation of some of Texas’s best football players. Thompson noted that “last year 221,339 people watched the state crown its champions in person and another 14,288 attended the 6-man football championship games. A whopping 54,347 watched the title game between Allen and Pearland” alone.
Below, I offer a few highlights from the ten state finals taking place last Thursday through Saturday night.
Thursday, December 18
2A D-2 Bremond (15-0) vs. Albany (14-1)
Congratulations to the Bremond Tigers on their exciting 28-20, come-from-behind victory. Albany jumped out to a 14-0 first-half advantage but the Tigers, on a thirty-nine yard Roshauud Paul pass to Josh White, narrowed the gap to seven before intermission. After play resumed, at the 5:18 mark in the third, the Lions padded their lead, putting seven more points on the board. As the final quarter started, Albany rested on a 21-7 advantage.
And then the Tigers lit up the scoreboard. During the fourth period, Rayandre Browning scored on a thirteen yard run. Paul followed up Browning’s heroics with thirty-five and twenty-three yard touchdown dashes of his own. Thus the contest ended with the Tigers securing their second-ever state title.
2A D-1 Canadian (15-0) vs. Mason (14-1)
Canadian, in its fourth 21st-century finals appearance, earned its third state championship with a convincing 34-7 win over the Mason Punchers. All of the Wildcat points came after the Punchers established a 7-0 first quarter lead. Once into the second quarter, Canadian got on track and subsequently scored five unanswered touchdowns.
Offensively, Wildcat quarterback and offensive MVP Tanner Schafer contributed mightily to the cause, completing twenty-two of twenty-eight tosses for 233 yards and two touchdowns. Running back Chance Cook (seventy-nine yards on a dozen carries) scored the final two Wildcat touchdowns on eleven- and six-yard runs.
On the defensive side of the football, Canadian tightened the screws after Mason’s first score. The stingy Wildcat defense, led by defensive MVP Andrew Ezell, limited the Punchers to only eighty-nine yards in the final three quarters of the contest.
3A D-2 Newton (12-4) vs. Waskom (15-1)
The most fitting introduction to my thoughts on the Newton-Waskom contest is . . . “I stand corrected!” I sincerely believed that the Eagles would fly away from AT&T Stadium on late Thursday afternoon with their fourth state championship. Instead, neophyte finalist Waskom controlled the ballgame almost from the very start. Offensively, they did it completely on the ground.
Without a single yard passing, the Wildcats’ ground game dominated. In a “cousinage” performance reminiscent of the Abilene Eagles 2009 title win featuring performances by Ronnell and Herschel Sims, Waskom cousins Kevin and Junebug Johnson accounted for 198 of the Wildcats’ 350 ground yards. Fittingly, the former copped honors as offensive MVP.
Linebacker and defensive MVP, Chan Amie, also contributed offensively, carrying the football three times for eleven yards (five of them for a third-quarter score), and taking a second-quarter kickoff return eighty-eight yards for the touchdown. On the opposite side of the ball, Amie enjoyed a satisfying defensive performance making sixteen tackles and knocking loose an Eagle fumble. The 41-22 Wildcat win obscured the lopsided nature of the Waskom win.
3A D-1 Cameron Yoe (12-4) vs. Mineola (12-4)
Cameron’s Yoemen asserted dominance from the opening kickoff, when a mental mistake by Mineola special teams set the continuing tone for Thursday’s fourth opening-day state-championship matchup. An unfielded football, which fell lifeless between two Yellow Jackets, gave Cameron excellent field position on the Yellow Jacket seventeen yard line. With only sixty-one seconds off the clock, the Yeoman began a scoring spree that resulted in seventy total points—a total tying the record set in 2012 by Stephenville for most points scored in an eleven-man football title game. Subsequently, Cameron had the Mineola defense on its heels for most of the remainder of the evening. The Yoemen took the title 70-40, completing the three-peat and becoming one of three new teams in 2014 to gain membership in Club 4.
Yoemen offensive production came courtesy of junior running back Traion Smith, who rushed for 123 yards and five touchdowns on twenty-two carries; quarterback Reid
Nickerson who completed fifteen of twenty-one passes for 311 yards and five touchdown (as well as rushing for sixty-four yards on five carries); Aaron Sims, who caught six passes (several quite acrobatically and in heavy coverage) for 163 yards and three touchdowns; and Sicory Smith who caught five passes for 106 yards and a score.
That being said, at the final gun, spectators were left with a haunting sense that they had seen a preview of 2015, perhaps a slightly smaller version of the Katy-Cedar Hill contests that we’ve watched for three years running. If Mineola fell short in its first-ever title game appearance, it did so with a host of sophomore starters, led by the agile and highly athletic quarterback Jeremiah Crawford (who rushed for 121 yards and two scores on twenty-one carries) and complemented by his sophomore teammate, Chantz Perkins (who rushed for 149 yards and two touchdowns on twenty-two carries). The Yellow Jackets, who will lose only seven seniors, are only a tick or two away from being a championship-caliber football team.
At the same time, Cameron Yoe, which loses several senior starters, is nevertheless also a very young team. We may have witnessed, last Thursday night, the birth of a great new Texas high school football rivalry. Wouldn’t it be nice to see another to see another Yoeman-Yellow Jacket title game a year from now?
Friday, December 19
4A D-2 Gilmer (16-0) vs. West Orange-Stark (13-3)
Inspired by the memory of fallen teammate Desmond Pollard (who collapsed and died nine months earlier during a pickup basketball game), the six-time finalist Gilmer Buckeyes overcame seemingly long odds—trailing 19-0 at one point and entering intermission with a 25-7 halftime deficit. In the end, the Buckeyes won, 35-25, with room to spare, chalking up state title number three (2004, 2009, 2014) in the process. The West Orange-Stark Mustangs largely had their way during the opening twenty-four minutes. The second half proved an entirely different matter.
The Buckeyes, in the persons of Nick Smith and Devin Smith on the receiving end of third-quarter McLane Carter touchdown tosses, and Blake Lynch on four- and seven-yard fourth-quarter touchdown runs, posted twenty-eight unanswered second half points. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the football, the Buckeyes imposed a suffocating defense and capitalized on multiple Mustang mistakes. Similar to the rapid-fire rhythm of Cameron Yoe the night before, early in the third quarter, Gilmer posted fourteen points in a scant eleven seconds. The feeding frenzy began with a Jackson Sikes interception of a West Orange-Stark pass on the first Mustang second-half possession. A six-play, seventy-five yard Gilmer drive made the score 25-14. The following Buckeye kickoff pinned the Mustangs deep in their own territory. On the very next play, WOS coughed up the football, allowing Buckeye defender Devin Smith to fall on it in the end zone. Suddenly—alarmingly—Gilmer was within four points.
Early in the fourth quarter, Gilmer took the lead on a Blake Lynch, four-yard touchdown dash. A little less than six minutes later, Lynch carried the ball into the end zone a second time, giving Gilmer a lead that it never lost. At the final gun, Gilmer emerged victorious.
4A D-1 Argyle (16-0) vs. Navasota (15-1)
In another battle of the undefeateds—Navasota and defending 4A D-2 state champion Argyle—the outcome largely turned on the performances of three marquee players: bruising Eagle running back and Arizona State commit, Nick Ralston, and the Rattlers’ record-setting duo of juniors, Shelton Eppler and Baylor commit, Tren’Davian Dickson.
Navasota struck not once but twice before Argyle got on the scoreboard. The first Rattler touchdown was a thirty-two yard pass from Eppler to Dickson. The reception set two new records: it added to Dickson’s week-old national, single-season-receiving high school touchdown record (which jumped to thirty-six) and Eppler’s sixty-eighth single-season touchdown pass, a toss that brought the Rattler signal caller even with Refugio’s Travis Quintanilla and his Texas high school record set in 2013. Eppler carried the second score into the end zone himself. But Argyle was hardly ready to roll over.
During the second quarter, Ralston (who ended the evening with fifty-four carries for 219 yards and three touchdowns) took the football into the end zone twice, leaving the score knotted at 14 as the first half closed. At the 6:49 mark in the third quarter, Eppler (who had to sit out the previous play courtesy of a vicious hit to the ribs) and Dickson hooked up again on a pass completion into double coverage, a pinpoint toss which Dickson, standing in the end zone, pulled the pigskin in with a single hand. Thus, Eppler surpassed Quintanilla, simultaneously enabling Dickson to add a thirty-seventh touchdown to his national record. More importantly, the score moved the Rattlers ahead, 21-14.
The next Argyle possession—a fifty-two yard, eleven-play drive— stalled on fourth down near the Rattler goal line. The Eagles pulled Ralston out of the game, set up in field goal formation, but snapped the ball directly to kicker, Drew Estrada. The subterfuge resulted in a quick, short Estrada dash into the end zone. On the following Navasota possession, the Eagles recovered a Dickson fumble on the Rattler thirty-five. With less than a minute left in the third, on fourth-and-eleven, Argyle quarterback (and coach’s son) Cooper Rodgers, hit Hunter Markwardt for a thirty-six yard score giving the Eagles a 28-21 lead, their first in the contest.
The Ratters proved unable to score on their subsequent possession. Argyle took advantage, using the opportunity to chew up much of the remaining clock behind Ralston’s pounding rushing attack. And then, with 1:39 remaining in the contest, Jerbreel Lipscomb intercepted an Argyle pass that gave the ball back to Navasota on the Argyle thirty-seven. Eppler again hit Dickson, who took the ball to the Eagle one. Eppler finished the job, scoring easily on an option-quarterback keeper, a Navasota touchdown and point after that sent the 4A D-1 title contest into overtime.
During the first OT, Ralston took his fiftieth carry of the night into the end zone. Eppler and Dickson returned the favor hooking up, respectively, for their seventieth touchdown pass and thirty-eighth touchdown reception of the 2014. If once was nice, twice was better. In the second OT, it was Eppler to Dickson—seventy-one and thirty-nine—all over again. Four plays later, it was game set and match as the Rattlers stopped the Eagle bell cow Ralston on a fourth-and-five rushing attempt which fell three yards short. Navasota’s 42-35, double-overtime victory marks the second Rattler championship in three seasons.
Eppler ended the evening thirty of fifty-four for 493 yards and four touchdowns (with two running touchdowns thrown in for good measure). His favorite target Dickson hauled in a dozen passes for 177 yards, four touchdowns, and offensive MVP honors.
5A D-2 Ennis (14-3) vs. Cedar Park (13-3)
The Ennis-Cedar Park matchup ending Friday night’s action initially appeared to be a near-effortless Ennis dash to the finish line for its fifth state title. Acquire that title the Lions indeed did . . . but not without considerable back-and-forth scoring that continued right down to the final Ennis possession.
Out of the gate, the Lions hung seventeen unanswered points on the Timberwolves. But in the second quarter, Cedar Park turned it into a football game. On three consecutive second-period possessions, the Timberwolves took the ball into the end zone, emerging with a 21-17 halftime lead.
The see-saw battle continued through the second half. Ennis retook the lead with a Tre Elliott two-yard touchdown run. Thereafter, a third-quarter Amir Alzer-to-Jack Grimm, thirty-yard touchdown strike gave the Timberwolves a transient 28-24 lead. On the very next play from scrimmage, Taylor Thompson took the pigskin seventy-one yards to retake the lead, 31-28. Cedar Park answered with their fifth touchdown of the evening when Alzer hit wide receiver Davis Fiala for a twenty-one yard strike with 4:21 left to play. The Timberwolves appeared to have a decisive 35-31 advantage.
Just when it looked like Cedar Park’s thirty-five points would be all the margin that the Timberwolves needed, Ennis converted on a third-and-nineteen, hook-and-lateral play from Devin Smith to Alston Lawrence to Taylor Thompson. Thompson picked up thirty-one yards, reviving the hope of a Lion victory. On the following play, the “other” Thompson “twin,” Donta, hauled in the winning, thirty-six yard touchdown pass with only twenty-one seconds left in the contest.
In a interesting twist, the offensive MVP award went to Cedar Park’s Thomas Hutchings (eighteen carries for 155 yards, including a seventy-five yard, go-ahead touchdown dash in the second quarter), who played both ways during the 2014 season. Defensive MVP honors went to Trey Edwards who picked off three of Alzer passes, and also made six tackles. The Ennis win makes the Lions a perfect 5-0 in state title competition.
Saturday, December 20
5A D-1 Aledo (15-1) vs. Temple (13-2)
If one offensive MVP award is good, then two is better—so Aledo senior quarterback Luke Bishop ought to think. Indeed, it took his brother Matt three Aledo title wins before copping 2011 offensive MVP honors. Brother Luke, however, captured the same recognition in both 2013 and 2014.
Bishop’s head-turning performance—nine completions of fourteen passes for 122 yards and two scores, and twenty carries for 169 yards and two touchdowns—sealed Aledo’s fifth state title in a short six years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014), and the sixth Bearcat title overall (the first being in 1998). Nevertheless, Temple’s Wildcats did not easily or quickly concede.
Coming out strong, Temple and Aledo each scored twice during the opening quarter. Near first period’s end, Aledo secured an important edge when Bearcat Larry Brown took a pick six into the Wildcat end zone. During the second quarter, Aledo put up two more touchdowns, while Temple only managed a thirty-five yard field goal. At intermission, Steve Wood’s Bearcats went to the locker room resting on a comfortable 35-17 lead.
Temple came out strong in the second half, closing the gap to 35-31 on two Marques Hatcher touchdowns—his second and third overall. The two Temple scores came in a scant seventeen seconds, courtesy of the Temple recovery of an onside kick. A fourth-quarter, twenty-nine yard, Bishop-to-Jess Anders scoring toss put Aledo back in the driver’s seat, 42-31. But the Wildcats would not go away. Temple quarterback and Baylor commit Chad President narrowed the margin on a six-yard touchdown dash. Subsequently, the Wildcat defense held, allowing Temple to execute a spectacular four-play, seventy-yard drive that took only forty-seven seconds. The scoring drive was capped by a President pass behind the line of scrimmage to receiver Tyler Hannon, who immediately stopped short and hit Jordan Lee on a forty yard, deflected touchdown pass, which gave Temple a 45-42 lead with 5:50 remaining.
Following the ensuing kickoff, Luke Bishop executed a masterful thirteen-play, seventy-five yard drive that consumed all but forty-seven seconds on the game clock. The drive culminated in a six-yard, game-winning Bishop touchdown sprint, leaving only enough time for five Wildcat plays. Fittingly, the final of those five plays was a thirty-five yard “Hail Mary” toss into triple coverage in the end zone, a pass which was intercepted by—who else?—Luke Bishop.
A more exciting game could not have been seen during Saturday’s football trifecta. Or could it?
6A D-2 Katy (14-2) vs. Cedar Hill (14-2)
If the Aledo-Temple contest was hauntingly heart-stopping . . . round #3 of the Katy-Cedar Hill title game rivalry was just as good or better.
The football gods seemingly favored the Longhorns at the very start of the game. Katy’s first possession ended in a safety when Kyle Goss tackled Tiger quarterback Garrett Dioron in the Katy end zone. Cedar Hill’s enthusiasm was short lived, however, as Katy took a commanding 13-2 lead by the end of the opening half. The Tigers looked well on the way to tying Celina and Southlake Carroll for a state-record eight championship titles.
The second half was a very different story. Two different Longhorn quarterbacks—Justin McMillan and Avery Davis—threw third-quarter touchdown tosses to offensive MVP Damarkus Lodge (four receptions for 101 yards). Those two scores, combined with a McMillan two-point conversion pass to Darris Harper and a Brooks Ralph point-after kick, put Cedar Hill back on top, 17-13. Not to be outdone, Katy retook the lead 20-17 on a late-third-quarter, three-yard Rodney Anderson touchdown run.
The decisive fourth quarter witnessed precious little scoring. Indeed, the only points posted by either team came off the toe of senior Longhorn kicker, Brooks Ralph. His first field goal (a forty-four yarder hit with eight minutes left to play) tied the score at twenty. The second—a twenty-five yarder—split the uprights with only two seconds left in the contest. Cedar Hill recovered the subsequent onside kick, drawing closure to a superb 6A D-2 final.
Saturday afternoon’s Cedar Hill victory marked the second-consecutive state title and third-ever championship (2006, 2013, 2014) for Joey Mcguire’s Longhorn dynasty.
6A D-1 Allen (16-0) vs. Cypress Ranch (13-3)
The evening’s grand finale was an Allen Eagles bid for their forty-third consecutive win and a championship three-peat against the “Cinderella” Cy-Ranch Mustangs (a program of recent vintage in only its fifth varsity season).
Some 52,308 spectators took the time to travel to AT&T Stadium to watch the festivities. Texas A&M commit Kyler Murray did what Kyler Murray does. For the third consecutive title game, Murray received offensive MVP recognition, and well he should have. His twenty-two of thirty-two pass completions for 316 yards and five touchdowns, combined with another sixty-three ground yards, certainly authenticated Murray’s unanimous choice by Texas Associated Sports Editors as the 2014 Player of the Year. It took Murray less than one minute of play to put the Eagles on top 7-0, courtesy of his fifty-one yard scoring toss to teammate Cody Butler.
In spite of the comfortable 47-16 Eagle margin of victory, the Mustangs had their moments, especially early in the contest. Bruising running back Charlie Booker contributed 115 yards and two touchdowns to the Cy-Ranch cause. In fact, the Mustangs only trailed 14-10 as the second quarter neared conclusion. That slender four-point margin would not survive the opening half. With his trademark, big-play style, a
seventeen-yard, Murray-to-Kerry Hall pass extended the Eagle lead to 21-10, with only one second left before intermission.
The second half was mostly all Eagles. Booker contributed to the Mustang cause with a nineteen-yard, third-quarter touchdown run, but the Eagles answered with twenty-six points of their own. In winning Saturday night, Allen joined an elite corps of only three other big conference contenders—Abilene High (1954-1956), Midland Lee (1998-2000), and Southlake Carroll (2004-2006)—to have captured three consecutive state titles. In addition to completing the three-peat, Allen’s 2014 title punched the Eagle ticket into Club 4 (2008, 2012, 2013, 2014). They, along with 1A Throckmorton and 3A Cameron Yoe, joined the ranks of only twenty-six other schools, bringing the total membership of the “Four or More Club” to twenty-nine in this, the 95th year of Texas high school football under UIL supervision.
The Moral of the Story
The really good teams here in Texas don’t rebuild; they reload! Winning has to do with local talent . . . but even more importantly, it has to do with local culture. It has to do with an expectation of success.
For the vast majority of Texas high schools on the outside looking in—those who have yet to make it to The Show—there is a formula for success that can be learned by those hoping to create a winning championship tradition. It can come, at least in part, through a careful study of the history of the winningest programs and those things that have brought them dynastic success. And there’s no better place to learn it than the Lone Star State.
Stay Tuned . . .
It has been a fantastic 2014 football season. Sincere and heartfelt thanks to Shanon Hunt for allowing me to offer yet another voice to the chorus of bloggers, sportswriters, television and radio broadcasters, and a legion of other commentators who do their best to describe the greatest show on earth to their fellow-football fans. In early 2015, after the MaxPreps final 2014 rankings are released, this correspondent will contribute his final blog to the Lone Star Football Network.
I suspect that the numbers will show that Texas, our Texas, is better than anywhere else in America when it comes to learning the science and art of crafting a winning pigskin program.
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