TUSCOLA — Jim Ned coach Matt Fanning is one of those guys who barely flinches when someone mentions his accomplishments. So it should come as no surprise that he had to be told early in the season that he was approaching the school record for career wins by a football coach.
That milestone fell in Friday’s 38-12 win over Rockdale, which allowed Fanning to surpass Brad McCoy on the all-time Jim Ned win list with a 54-13 overall record.
Coleman 26, Llano 20 — Brayden Torres passed for 232 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 60 yards and another score to fuel the Bluecats to an upset win over the Class 3A Division I Yellowjackets.
Playing its second consecutive game without quarterback Jadin Jackson, Coleman (3-1) raced out to 14-6 halftime lead and withstood a third-quarter Llano rally to win the game with the only touchdown of the fourth quarter.
Coleman 30, Brady 14 — Brent Bouldin rushed for 154 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Bluecats to their second consecutive win.
Brayden Torres added 73 rushing yards and a TD and passed for 44 yards for Coleman (2-1), which outscored Brady 16-8 in the second half to pull away for the 16-point win.
“All good things to those who wait.”
— English proverb
We’ve all seen good high school coaches let go after only two years. And with very few exceptions, it’s almost always a bad move.
Well, allow me to give you three good examples of why there is a payoff for patience and a reward for living up to the words we feed the kids — you know, like overcoming adversity, being loyal, being respectful and working through the process.
Yeah, those words.
De Leon 42, Cross Plains 7 — Heston Jobe hit 15 of 21 passes for 185 yards and two touchdowns while adding 66 yards and two more scores on the ground to lift the Bearcats to a comfortable win over the Buffaloes.
Jake Cooper also had a big game, rushing for 152 yards and three scores on 22 carries while adding six catches for 70 yards for De Leon (2-0), which raced out to a 35-7 lead by halftime.
San Saba 40, Florence 3 — The Armadillos piled up 365 yards rushing, getting big days on the ground from running back Ethan Gonzales (18-133, 2 TDs) and quarterback Lane Miller (13-122, 2 TDs) in their blowout win over the Buffaloes.
Miller also passed for 56 yards with a scoring strike to Gonzales as San Saba built a 19-0 first-quarter lead. Up 19-3 at halftime, the ‘Dillos outscored Florence 21-0 over the final two quarters to put the game away.
DE LEON — Third-year De Leon coach Jacob Marwitz has spent much of his tenure trying to mold his team into a cohesive unit. Everybody on the same page. Everybody has the same goals. Nobody is more important than anyone else.
So it may have been a stroke of luck when the unassuming Heston Jobe emerged as a freshman last year to operate the De Leon offense behind center.
Jobe was too young to feel entitled, too inexperienced to be pretentious and too quiet to hog all of the attention. And best of all, he was productive, rushing for 1,200 yards and 15 scores and passing for 1,100 yards and eight more TDs as a ninth grader.
DE LEON — The biggest word in the De Leon football dictionary for 2023 might be “if.”
If the Bearcats can stay healthy, if they’ve absorbed enough of third-year coach Jason Marwitz’s system and if they can find weapons to supplement sophomore quarterback Heston Jobe, DHS may emerge as a surprise in 2023.
Any mixture of those three, however, and the projections get a bit hazy. But one thing is for certain: De Leon, with only five seniors, must avoid the medical tent if it is to reach its potential this fall.
Day 2 of Big Country Preps’ 2023 Photo Tour is now in the books, with six more days of shooting yet to come from practice fields throughout the area.
Here are but a few of the images collected Tuesday:
Continue reading “Scenes from Big Country Preps Photo Tour Day 2”
Football is just around the corner, 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 Wednesday, Aug. 16. 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 July 31, we’ll be spotlighting each 11-man team in the area and posing some of the key questions they’ll face in 2023 as part of our annual “Countdown to Two-a-Days” series.
We continue in Class 2A Division I with the De Leon Bearcats. On Saturday we will take a look at the Goldthwaite Eagles, followed by the San Saba Armadillos on Sunday.
Continue reading “COUNTDOWN TO TWO-A-DAYS: The De Leon Bearcats … 24 days to two-a-days”
SPRINGTOWN — Big Country athletes made a big showing at the Region II-2A track meet, collecting a combined 37 medals and clinching 28 state berths over the two-day event at Porcupine Stadium.
Along the way, Albany and Cisco went 1-2 in the boys team race, while Stamford shared the girls team title with Era and Hamilton.
The Albany Lions had the highest point total of any program, boys or girls, collecting five medals on the way to 70 points, while the Cisco boys followed closely behind with 67 points. Stamford finished third in the boys team race with 64 points, while the girls earned 56 points to finish in a three-way tie atop the team standings.
It’s difficult to trump a no-hitter, though Snyder’s Ava Aviles came close last week.
Aviles, who threw back-to-back two-hitters for Snyder softball, is our first runner-up to her classmate, Player of the Week Ty Davis and his first career no-hitter.
Davis earned a 13-2 five-inning win over Levelland last week, holding LHS hitless in the mercy rule win, finishing with five strikeouts.
“Ty has continued to improve on the mound and has given us some excellent innings this season, none bigger than last Tuesday with his no-hit performance,” Snyder coach Shane Stewart said. ” I am proud of him and looking forward to watching him mature as a pitcher and a young man.”
You know you’re on a roll when you throw a no-hitter and it’s your second-best performance of the week.
That was the case for Hico junior pitcher Kiersten Fincannon, not only threw a no-hitter in a 24-0 win over Meridian, but also tossed a perfect game in a 22-0 rout of Itasca.
Softball tournaments can distort the significance of pitching accomplishments due to inning caps or time limits, rendering perfect games or no-hitters into half-versions of their true selves.
However, there is no denying that tournaments are work, especially for pitchers, and our Big Country Preps Player of the Week, Hamlin southpaw Zoe Moore, earned the accolade with a 4-0 record in the Wichita Falls Sunrise Optimist Tournament last week.
He entered last week as the leading scorer in the entire Big Country, putting up more than 37 points per game. So few will be surprised to hear that Benamin’s Grayson Ridgon has put up yet another performance worthy of our Big Country Preps Player of the Week Award.
Yet last week’s numbers were big, even by his standards.
Helping the Mustangs to consecutive routs of Harrold (100-36) and Crowell (93-53), the sophomore guard poured in 50 and 51 points respectively and even found time to snag a head-turning 20 rebounds in the Crowell win.
NOTE: This will be our final Player of the Week column for 2022. It will return on Monday, Jan. 9.
It’s always a significant accomplishment to chart a double-double. But when one averages a double-double over the course of five straight games, you begin to put a blip on the area radar screen.
Munday senior Jaxon Bowman did precisely that last week, helping the Moguls to a 5-0 record and the tournament championship at Blackwell. Aside from averaging 11.2 points per game, the senior grabbed a whopping 13 boards per contest to along with a combined 12 steals as Munday improved to 12-2.
After highlighting the Big Country’s top guards and forwards the past two nights, we now take a look at the area’s best big men.
For the final installment in our three-part boys basketball position rankings series, we rank the Big Country’s top 10 post players.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading through our rankings, and make sure to check back for all our boys and girls basketball coverage this season.
After kicking off our boys basketball position rankings series on Tuesday with the guards, we now shift our attention to the forwards.
For the second installment in our three-part series, we rank the area’s top-10 players at that position for 2022-23.
We hope you enjoy our list.
With boys basketball season beginning this week, it’s time to shine a spotlight on some of the players you’ll be reading about throughout the 2022-23 season.
For the first installment in a three-part series that will cover all positions on the area boys basketball scene, we’ll be taking a look at the Big Country’s top guards, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch this winter.
We hope you enjoy reading through our list.
Coleman 47, Bangs 0 — The Bluecats nailed down the No. 2 playoff seed out of this league, outgaining the Dragons 455-77 in a dominating win.
Fueled by a 337-yard rushing effort, Coleman (8-2, 5-1) cruised to a 27-0 halftime lead and increased that to 41-0 by the start of the fourth quarter. Quarterback Jadin Jackson led the way, rushing for 141 yards and two touchdowns on just six carries while going 6-of-8 passing for 118 yards and two more scores.
After focusing on the top guards and forwards the Big Country has to offer the past two nights, it’s time to shift our attention to the paint.
For the final installment in our three-part position rankings series, we list our top-10 post players for the 2022-23 season.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading through these rankings, and make sure to come back next week when we’ll feature the top boys basketball players in the Big Country.
After kicking off our girls basketball position rankings series with the guards on Tuesday, we now turn our attention to the forwards.
For the second installment in our three-part series, we rank the area’s top 10 players at that position with some others to watch for in 2022-23.
We hope you enjoy our list.
With the girls basketball season upon us, it’s time to take a look at the local and area players who will be making the biggest impact for their teams during the 2022-23 season.
For the first installment in a three-part series that will cover all positions, we’ll be focusing on the Big Country’s top guards, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch this season.
As with any such list, these rankings are subjective. We hope you enjoy reading through our selections.
Bangs 34, Hamilton 27 — The Dragons picked up an important district win over the Bulldogs, scoring the final two touchdowns to rally from a 27-20 fourth-quarter deficit.
Bangs (6-3, 4-1) finished with 346 yards of total offense, getting 148 yards and three touchdowns rushing from Guy Powell and 119 yards and two scores passing from Kenny Cole. Powell was also the Dragons’ leading receiver, catching three passes for 71 yards and two more scores.
Tolar 57, Bangs 0 — Playing BHS with sole possession of first place in the district standings on the line, the Rattlers ran away from the Dragons in shutout win.
Tolar (8-0, 4-0) held a potent Bangs offense to just 191 yards, using a 29-point second quarter to break open what was a scoreless game to that point. the Rattlers followed the big second quarter with 14 points in each of the next two to pull away even further in the second half.
Bangs 42, San Saba 35 — Guy Powell rushed for 193 yards and four touchdowns on 22 carries to lift Bangs to a crucial district win over the Armadillos.
San Saba managed 505 yards in total offense but hurt itself with nine penalties and a 10 percent success rate on third downs.
