San Angelo Lake View 44, Pecos 41 — Trailing 34-15 at halftime, the Chiefs outscored the Eagles 29-7 over the final two quarters to rally for a thrilling win and improve to 2-0 on the season.
Led by Ezekiel Saldana, who rushed for 132 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries, Pecos pounded out 313 yards on the ground. But Lake View countered with a big game from quarterback Albert Rodriguez, who passed for 203 yards and four touchdowns while adding a rushing score.
Each week here at Big Country Preps, we’ll post our picks for all of that week’s 11-man games, in addition to the results of Evan Ren’s Twitter polls for each matchup.
For those interested in voting, polls go up on Monday night each week and close Thursday morning.
Disagree with our picks or the Twitter consensus? Let us know in the comments section below.
Continue reading “Big Country Preps’ Pick ‘Em Panel (Week 2)”
LAST WEEK: 34-15, .694If this were a horse race, Gramps Ren just stumbled out of the gate.
A .694 pick percentage is one of the worst weeks I’ve had in recent memory — brought on by a disastrous 15-9 tally (.625) in the six-man ranks.
That stinks.
Alas, we have yet to reach the first turn, so it’s way early. If I’m not hitting over .800 down the backstretch, I may resort to consulting with a palm reader.
Here’s a look at this week’s Big Country football games.
I’ll see you on the road.
It has been at least years since we’ve seen the type of offensive execution exhibited by the Big Spring Steers in Friday’s 36-14 win over Vernon. And Big Country Preps has never had a Big Spring player as its player of the week.
Until now.
Junior quarterback Gabriel Baeza helped bring both of those streaks to a close, hitting 20 of 32 passes for 282 yards and four scores. In his spare time he also rushed nine times for 56 yards and two more touchdowns, giving him 338 total yards and a direct hand in six scores.
In doing so, he takes our first Big Country Preps Player of the Week for the 2020-21 school year. It was the first season-opening win for the Steers since a 58-56 win over Kerrville Tivy on Aug. 30, 2014.
Big Spring 36, Vernon 14 — Junior quarterback Gabriel Baeza passed for 270 yards and four touchdowns while rushing for 47 yards and two more scores to lead the Steers to a comfortable win in their season opener.
Leading 18-14 at halftime, Big Spring outscored the Lions 18-0 over the final two quarters to pull away. The Steers outgained Vernon 406-241 for the game, including a 307-65 advantage through the air, and won the turnover battle 4-1.
Each week here at Big Country Preps, we’ll post our picks for all of that week’s 11-man games, in addition to the results of Evan Ren’s Twitter polls for each matchup.
For those interested in voting, polls go up on Monday night each week and close Thursday morning.
Disagree with our picks or the Twitter consensus? Let us know in the comments section below.
Continue reading “Big Country Preps’ Pick ‘Em Panel (Week 1)”
LAST WEEK: 0-0, .000
SEASON TOTAL: 0-0, .000
After picking a career-high 83 percent a year ago, I was feeling quite self-assured and self-important at the close of last football season.
Little did I realize that a year later, I’d be happy to just to have games to pick and not care about what the percentage is.
In short, the world has dealt me a serious dose of perspective.
We have football, ladies and gents. Let’s hope a sense of normality returns with it.
At any rate, let’s take quick look at this week’s area contests.
I’ll see you on the road.
After a week of highlighting area playmakers, we wrap up our eight-part preseason position rankings series with the Big Country’s best signal callers.
To complete our look at the area’s top players, we’ve ranked our top 10 quarterbacks with a list of others to watch in 2020.
We hope you enjoy this list and that you’ve enjoyed our position rankings as we get set to kickoff a new season.
Continue reading “BCP Football Preseason Position Rankings: Quarterbacks”
Video podcast No. 1 features Big Country Preps’ Evan Ren and Daniel Yonngblood making their picks for Week 1 of the 2020 high school football season.
As we wind down our eight-part preseason position rankings series, we arrive finally at the Big Country’s top rushers.
After breaking down this year’s crop of receivers and tight ends Monday, we move now to the area’s top backs, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch in 2020. Don’t forget to check in Wednesday night when we conclude our series with the top 10 area quarterbacks.
We hope you enjoy tonight’s list and encourage you to check out the other position groups, which are linked below.
We’re approaching the final stretch of our eight-part preseason position rankings series, and it’s time to look at the Big Country’s top pass-catchers.
After starting the offensive portion of our series Sunday with the big guys up front, we now shift our attention to the playmakers on the perimeter, ranking our top 10 wide receivers/tight ends with a list of others to watch in 2019.
We hope you enjoy our list and encourage you to check out the other position groups, which are linked below.
With the defensive and special teams rankings in the rear view, it’s time to look at the area’s offensive standouts. And we’ll start with the foundation of any productive offense: the offensive line.
For the fifth installment of our eight-part preseason position rankings series, we turn our attention to the big boys, ranking the Big Country’s top 10 offensive linemen with a list of others to watch in 2020.
We hope you enjoy reading through our rankings
After recognizing the top defensive players throughout the Big Country over the past three days, it’s time to honor the specialists.
We continue our eight-part preseason position rankings series by naming our top 10 kickers and top three punters to watch this fall.
We hope you enjoy this list and that you have enjoyed our position rankings as we get set to kickoff the 2020 season.
After starting with the linemen and linebackers, we turn to the secondary to complete our look at the top defenders in the Big Country.
For the third installment in our eight-part preseason position rankings series, we key on the defensive backs, giving our list of the area’s top-10 players and others to look out for in 2020.
We hope you enjoy our list.
After taking a look at the Big Country’s top defensive linemen on Wednesday, it’s now time to examine those who will backing them in 2020.
Continuing with Big Country Preps’ eight-part preseason position rankings series, here’s our top 10 linebackers to watch this fall, as well as a list of the others we’re expecting big things from.
We hope you enjoy our list.
With the start of football season less than two weeks away, it’s time to take a look at the players who will be making the biggest impact in 2020.
For the first installment in an eight-part series that will cover all position groups, we’ll be taking a look at the area’s top defensive linemen, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch this fall.
As with any such list, these rankings are subjective. We hope you enjoy reading through them.
Without further ado it is time for us to make our Big Country predictions, district-by-district.
This is the culmination of several weeks of research and two solid months of summertime labor, so we’re more than ready to post it.
Every year, for the past several years, I have looked ahead at the season schedule to create a menu of sorts — a menu for Big Country football connoisseurs to choose some Friday night pigskin in the area.
History has proven that this isn’t an exact science, and the further out we go from Week 1, the more difficult this endeavor becomes. Nonetheless, I cannot resist a peek at my crystal ball — smudged as it may be.
I must emphasize, that the entire list you’re about to read is subject to change. This is not a concrete list of Big Country Preps Games of the Week. It’s closer to an educated guess, contingent upon about 10,000 different variables.
Few quarterbacks in the state had a tougher assignment last year than Big Spring’s Gabriel Baeza.
Thrust into the starting position less than a year removed from a season on the freshman squad, the then-sophomore signal caller had to lead a rebuilding program in its first year under coach Cannon McWilliams against a schedule that was nothing short of brutal.
While the results weren’t always pretty — the Steers averaged 13.8 points per game on their way to a 2-9 record — Baeza’s growth against that backdrop earned him the respect of his teammates and coaches. And heading into his second year as starter, expectations are considerably higher for the 6-foot, 180-pound junior.
Cannon McWilliams’ first year as Big Spring’s head coach could best be described as a learning experience, both for him and his young Steers squad.
But with a good group back and that 2-9 season behind them, both are expecting bigger things this fall.
In a four-team district once again, the Steers have already locked up a spot in the Class 4A Division I playoffs. But they’re more concerned with continuing their growth track and building on the foundation laid last season.
Day 1 of Big Country Preps’ 2020 Photo Tour is now in the books, with seven more days of shooting yet to come from practice fields throughout the area.
Here are but a few of the images and videos collected today:
With the first games of the 2020 football season now less than a month away, we here at Big Country Preps are working diligently to get ourselves and our readers prepared for the upcoming campaign.
As we charge toward the Aug. 14 release of our Big Country Preps Preseason Football Preview and the season’s first game on Aug. 27, we’ll be releasing the composite football schedules for each UIL district housing one or more of our 40 11-man teams.
After kicking off with Class 2A Division II on Tuesday, 2A DI on Wednesday, 3A DII on Thursday and 3A DI on Friday and 4A DII on Saturday, we continue with 4A DI today. We’ll wrap up the schedules series Monday with Classes 5A and 6A.
Football is fast approaching, and we at BigCountryPreps.com are committed to bringing you the information you need to prepare for your favorite team’s season.
We’ll be releasing our Big Country Preps Preseason Football Preview, the most comprehensive look at the upcoming Big Country football season anywhere, on Friday, Aug. 14. But you won’t have to wait until then to sate your gridiron appetite.
Leading up to the first day of fall football practice on Aug. 3, we’ll be spotlighting each 11-man team in the area and posing some of the key questions they’ll face in 2019 as part of our “Countdown to Two-a-Days” series.
After featuring Snyder on Tuesday, we move to District 2-4A Division I with the Big Spring Steers. On Thursday, we will take a look at the Brownwood Lions followed by the Stephenville Yellow Jackets on Friday.
Like most followers of Texas high school football, Big Country Preps’ Evan Ren and Daniel Youngblood are big fans of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine.
After using this week’s Capital Farm Credit Wednesday Night Podcast to discuss the publication’s projections on the area’s Class 1A-3A teams, Evan and Daniel discuss Texas Football’s forecast for the Big Country’s Big Schools in this week’s podcast.
The “What Might Have Been” feature series is Big Country Preps’ effort to celebrate area athletes who have seen their seasons affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. The series will continue through June 15. If you have a suggested story for the “What Might Have Been” series, please contact Big Country Preps at Evan.Ren@BigCountryPreps.com.
With the Big Spring Lady Steers losing a number of key performers in 2020, a number of question marks existed about whether coach Chelsey Jordan’s team could find enough players to pull up the slack.
Junior utility Jocelyn Gonzales answered many of them on her own.
Gonzales, who entered the COVID-19 lockdown with a .500 batting average through 18 games, was well on her way to establishing herself as one of the top players in the Big Country.
“Last year she was hitting in the sixth or seventh hole for us,” Jordan said. “But she was clearly our four-hole hitter this year. … She just steps up. She’s very clutch and if you have people on base, she’s going to score them.
“We were just dying for someone to be a leader and we pulled her aside. She said, ‘Gotcha coach’ and ran with it.”
In a world that has seemingly gone mad, I’ll take any dose of good news that I can find — even if it’s mundane.
The stock market inched up a half point? I’ll take it. We can go back to worrying about COVID-19? I’m all-in. The buildings in Abilene are still standing? That’s a check mark in the plus column.
So how do we get there?
How do we reestablish normality?
Aside from the obvious fact that we need to stop the ongoing mayhem that is plaguing our society, getting back to common things we all hold dear will set the foundation for healing. And I’m talking about the simplest of pleasures, from peaceful walks in the park, shopping in a mall, going to the movies or attending a sporting event.
In Texas, the latter cannot be overstated, especially when it comes to football.
Continue reading “EVAN REN: We can all use some good news and football can provide some of it”
I’ve always held to a personal axiom that perspective is everything. True or not, how we view a situation becomes the truth in our minds.
There’s no escaping it and every one of us has our own perspective.
Well, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown have changed my perspective in several ways on several different things. And for a middle-aged guy who is pretty well set in my ways, this is like the planets aligning.
I’ve managed to list my top 10 takeaways from lockdown, as they pertain to this website and what we’re trying to accomplish here.
Let’s dive in:
Continue reading “EVAN REN: 10 things I’ll take away from the COVID-19 pandemic”
“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”
— Elbert Hubbard
In a Tweet released earlier today, the University Interscholastic League announced that it is actively working to allow schools to begin limited summer strength and conditioning and marching band activities on June 8.
The mere sight of this announcement had me on the verge of challenging my 55-year-old frame to do a cartwheel for which it is ill-prepared to attempt. Because frankly, Texas without high school pigskin is like Texas without oxygen.
The thought of its absence has been too bitter to contemplate. And in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve allowed myself to go down one rabbit hole after another — trying to discern information from disinformation, and political rhetoric from that which is concrete.
UIL is aware of Gov. Abbott’s May 18 announcement and is actively working with appropriate state officials to allow schools to begin limited summer strength & conditioning and marching band activities on June 8. Once finalized, details will be released to schools.
— Texas UIL (@uiltexas) May 19, 2020
Continue reading “EVAN REN: UIL announcement promising, but are we out of the woods just yet?”
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
— Voltaire
There’s a barbeque place near my home that I don’t like. In fact, I seldom go there — deliberately bypassing it whenever the BBQ craving hits me in favor of better choices.
But Friday, after two months of COVID-19 exile, I decided to make a quick run to bring home some brisket for the wife and I and elected to go to the very place I try to avoid because it was convenient.
Funny how one’s perspective can change while in isolation.
Abilene’s worst barbeque was suddenly good. In fact, it was beyond good. It was like freakin’ nirvana.
I suspect that’s the way it’s going to be with virtually everything I had taken for granted before the lockdown. And I’m already experiencing some of it.
Continue reading “EVAN REN: Virus may teach us some appreciation (for a while)”
Photos may be purchased for $7 each by clicking on the small shopping cart emblem below the lower right corner of the gallery. The “BigCountryPreps.com” watermark will be removed from all purchased photos.
Photos may be purchased for $7 each by clicking on the small shopping cart emblem below the lower right corner of the gallery. The “BigCountryPreps.com” watermark will be removed from all purchased photos.
Scoring and rebounding is only part of the story when it comes to basketball. Behind the scenes and beyond the view of the public, is where character is often measured. And it is with our Big Country Preps Gym Rat Team that we salute the individuals who exude the most of it.
This team isn’t about who the best players are, though some of the area’s top players are on this list.
The Gym Rat team is about effort, discipline, toughness, coachability and selflessness — traits that coaches love above all else and that championship foundations are built upon.
It is for that reason that our Gym Rat team is selected entirely by area coaches, described in their own words. And Big Country Preps is absolutely honored to present these individuals to you — the best “team players” (boys and girls) that the area had to offer during the 2019-20 season.
Players are listed in no particular order.
Enjoy.
Here are our superlative award winners for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps boys basketball team. For the rest of this year’s selections, click the links below.
Here are our first-team selections for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps boys basketball team. For the rest of this year’s boys and girls basketball selections, click the links below.
Here are our second-team selections for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps boys basketball team. For the rest of this year’s boys and girls basketball selections, click the links below.
Here are our third-team selections for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps boys basketball team. For the rest of this year’s boys and girls basketball selections, click the links below.
Here are our superlative award winners for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps girls basketball team. For the rest of this year’s selections, click the links below.
Here are our third-team selections for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps girls basketball team. For the rest of this year’s boys and girls basketball selections, click the links below.
Here are our third-team selections for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps girls basketball team. For the rest of this year’s boys and girls basketball selections, click the links below.
Here are our third-team selections for the 2020 All-Big Country Preps girls basketball team. For the rest of this year’s boys and girls basketball selections, click the links below.
After recognizing the Big Country’s top pitchers, catchers, infielders and outfielders, we wrap up our baseball position rankings series with the area’s multi-position standouts.
For the final installment in our five-part series, we take a look at the top utility players, ranking our top-six with others to watch in 2020.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading through these lists and are as excited as we are that baseball season is underway.
For Day 4 of our five-part baseball position rankings series, we focus our binoculars on the outfield grass.
After highlighting the Big Country’s top pitchers, catchers and infielders earlier this week, we now do the same with the area’s best outfielders, ranking our top 10 with others to watch in 2020.
We hope you enjoy our list.
After kicking off the spring sports season with our softball position rankings last week, it’s time to turn our attention to the the baseball field and the names we’ll be hearing and reading about throughout the 2020 campaign.
For the first installment in a five-part series that will cover all position groups on the area baseball scene, we’ll be taking a look at the Big Country’s top pitchers, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch this fall.
We hope you enjoy reading through our list.
The playoffs are here for Texas’ high school boys basketball teams and, as always, Big Country squads will have their say in how the postseason plays out.
No fewer than 44 local and area teams have qualified for the playoffs in their respective classifications, giving us plenty to talk about as bi-district play gets underway Monday night.
From here on out, it’s win or go home, and with two rounds scheduled for this week and three for next, it won’t take long to see who all has a deep run in them.
With that, let’s take a look at what this first round has to offer.
After highlighting the top pitchers and catchers on the Big Country softball scene the past two nights, it’s time to turn our attention to the field.
For the third installment in our five-part position rankings series, we list our top-10 infielders in the area for the 2020 season.
We hope you enjoy reading through our rankings.