Coahoma 59, Eldorado 34 — Brysen Kerby rushed for 254 yards and five scores as Coahoma improved to 3-0 in dominating fashion.
CHS rushed for 408 yards as a team to stay unbeaten, but was efficient through the air as well. Kolt Redden was 9 of 15 through the air for 94 yards and one score.
COAHOMA — After losing 18 lettermen to graduation, including seven offensive and six defensive starters from last year’s 9-3 team, the preseason prospects for Coahoma football weren’t exactly off the charts coming into 2020.
It was, afterall, the Bulldogs’ best season in more than 15 years and the bulk of that club’s experienced players had just been handed their diplomas.
Add the fact that one of the graduates was standout quarterback/linebacker Zack Schneider (1,598 yards rushing 20 TDs; 1,293 yards passing, 15 TDs, 63 tackles) and most prognosticators viewed Coahoma as a fringe playoff candidate that was likely to be rebuilding this year.
Thus far, the Bulldogs are making the “experts” look rather silly — posting wins over archrival Forsan (15-13) and Miles (49-0) with a balanced offense, a physical defense and more players touching the football than one may have thought possible from CHS a year ago.
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 3)”
Big Country Preps will publish area volleyball statistical leaders each Tuesday at 7 p.m.
This database will be continually updated for our subscribers throughout the remainder of the season, using only those statistics submitted by area coaches.
Teams that do not submit their statistics in a given week will not be listed when our stats are posted, but will be added to the lists below as they are received in the coming days.
Coahoma 49, Miles 0 — Brysen Kerby rushed for 136 yards and two scores and Kolt Redden passed for 156 yards and two more TDs to lead Coahoma to an easy win at Miles.
The Bulldogs (2-0) raced out to a 36-0 halftime lead before coasting home. Miles dropped to 0-2 with the loss.
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.
Hawley 61, Roscoe 7 — Austin Cumpton rushed for 148 yards and five touchdowns and Xavier Rodela threw for 116 and two scores to lead Hawley to a win over Roscoe in its opener.
Aeneas Segura, Chandlin Myers and Will Scott all hauled in touchdown passes from Rodela by night’s end.
The Bearcats raced out to a 42-7 lead by halftime and never looked back.
Merkel 46, Reagan County 14 — Merkel rolled up 270 rushing yards to win the debut of first-year coach Britt Hart.
Isaac Sebastian had a huge night, rushing for 228 yards and four scores on only 12 carries.
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.
Given what they accomplished last fall, Coahoma seniors Patrick Gutierrez and Colin Daniels would have been leaned on heavily this season under any circumstances.
But take into account that the Bulldogs graduated an 18-player senior class that was instrumental in achieving last year’s 9-3 record, and the two linebackers’ importance to CHS’ 2020 success grows even larger.
Two of just 12 returning lettermen for the Bulldogs this season, Gutierrez and Daniels are hoping to show that last year’s rise to prominence was more than just a radar blip. And both understand the role they’ll play — both as players and leaders — in keeping Coahoma a relevant part of the Region I-3A Division II playoff discussion.
Fresh off their best season in more than 15 years, the Coahoma Bulldogs will have their mettle tested in 2020.
After losing 18 players from last year’s 9-3 team, including two-way standouts Zack Schneider, Keegan Dobbs and Jonathan Schneider, coach Chris Joslin’s squad will be out to prove that the CHS program can continue to compete at a high level through heavy graduation losses.
With 12 lettermen returning, including four offensive and five defensive starters, the Bulldogs will have a foundation from which to build. But Joslin believes his team’s success will ultimately come down to how well his new regulars adapt to their expanded roles.
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 and 2A DI on Wednesday, we continue with 3A DII today, followed by 3A DI on Friday, 4A DII on Saturday, 4A DI on Sunday and Classes 5A and 6A on Monday.
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 Brady on Wednesday, we move to District 4-3A Division II with the Coahoma Bulldogs. On Friday, we will take a look at the Comanche Indians followed by the Dublin Lions on Saturday.
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 receiving their copies on Monday, the duo used this week’s Capital Farm Credit Wednesday Night Podcast to discuss the publication’s projections on the area’s Class 1A-3A teams. In Part 2 next week, Evan and Daniel will discuss Texas Football’s forecast for the Big Country’s Big Schools.
“A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.” — John Lubbock
My business partner, Daniel Youngblood, is the king of not worrying.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
If NASA were to announce that an asteroid impact was imminent in 15 minutes and that Abilene would be at ground zero, anything beyond a shrug of the shoulders from Youngblood would surprise me. Of course, I wouldn’t be there to see it. I’d be 25 miles down the road with the accelerator smashed to the floor, one hand on the steering wheel and a rabbit’s foot in the other.
The recent turmoil in the world has put both of our natures on display — him letting it all roll off his back and me, well … being me.
If fate allows it, a return to normalcy is the objective here and the sooner the better. As the designated worrier at Big Country Preps, I’ve been on pins and needles throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive social unrest created by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And let’s just call it what it was — a murder.
That said, I’m currently doing my best to steal a page from the Youngblood stress-free handbook and turning my attention from our tumultuous, viral-plagued world to something I can understand: football. That means that heading into the summer months, we’ll be diving headlong into our previews for the upcoming season.
Continue reading “EVAN REN: We’re pushing ahead at Big Country Preps — getting the the ball rolling”
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?”
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.
Photos by Linda Moody
Sitting at 7-1-1 when this season was stopped by the COVID-19 outbreak, the Coahoma baseball team’s record was almost identical to the 6-2-1 mark the Bulldogs had posted in nondistrict play the year before.
But first-year head coach Chris Arista and his players were convinced this group was different from the 2019 squad that closed its campaign with a 3-9 run through District 5-3A.
With nine seniors on its 17-player roster, Coahoma was the most experienced team in a league that also featured Clyde, Jim Ned, Anson and Merkel. And as such, the Bulldogs were determined to take a step forward after losing out to Merkel for the fourth playoff spot last spring.
Unfortunately, due to the University Scholastic League’s April 17 decision to cancel all spring sports, they never got that opportunity. And while Arista firmly believes his team was destined for success, he’ll never quite know just how things might have played out under different circumstances.
“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.
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 or until the UIL rules that high school athletics statewide may resume. If you have a suggested story for the “What Might Have Been” series, please contact Big Country Preps at Evan.Ren@BigCountryPreps.com.
Coahoma’s softball team has been out for vengeance ever since last May when it lost to Henrietta in the area round for the second straight season.
Senior outfielders Caitlyn Corley, Macee Grant and Sidney Rinard plus second baseman Alex Bailey were tasked with making sure the Bulldogettes stayed hungry in 2020.
The early results had been positive as Coahoma started 15-5-1 before the coronavirus pandemic brought its season to a halt just as District 5-3A action had begun.
Now the Bulldogettes’ four seniors are forced to wait and see if they’ll be able to finish their high school careers on their own terms.
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.