Anson 21, Haskell 20 — It all boiled down to turnovers in this tough Anson road win, with the Tiger defense charting five takeaways to key the victory.
Corey Layne rushed for 49 scores and two TDs to lead the Anson offense.
Haskell (0-3) was led by Haegen Pinkerton’s 70 yards passing and 107 yards rushing. He added two rushing TDs.
Stamford 27, Ballinger 0 — Christian Duran threw for 205 yards and two TDs and rushed for 71 yards and another score as Stamford improved to 3-0.
Ballinger (0-3) got most of its yardage through the air, with Cade Stube and Kyson Weathers combining on a 14 of 27 effort for 198 yards.
After two weeks, few teams are grabbing the attention of Big Country football fans more than the Clyde Bulldogs (2-0), who have opened with consecutive wins over Cisco and Eastland.
And topping the list of last week’s area performers is Clyde senior quarterback Blake Carr, who posted some eye-popping numbers in last week’s 34-21 win at EHS.
Stamford 47, Haskell 13 — The Bulldogs (2-0) remained unbeaten with a balanced offensive effort that produced 160 yards through the air and 189 yards rushing.
Christian Duran hit 10 of 11 throws, two of which resulted in TDs to lead Stamford.
After a summer-long effort to produce our football preview, it is good to be back in our school year routine — a big part of which is our Big Country Preps Player of the Week.
That said, we are proud to hand our first accolade for 2023-24 to Snyder senior quarterback Easton Stewart, who led the Tigers to a 42-0 season-opening win over Slaton last week.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Hawley-Jim Ned football (39 images)”
Stamford 48, Hamlin 6 — Kaston Vega rushed for 120 yards and three scores and Cle Whitfield rushed for 100 yards and another score to lead Stamford to a big win in the return of coach Wayne Hutchinson.
Stamford outgained Hamlin 417-110 while forcing the Pied Pipers into a pair of turnovers.
Continue reading “DISTRICT 4-2A DIV. I WEEK 1 REPORT: Stamford the lone district winner in Week 1”
TUSCOLA — Jim Ned may not have appeared diversified in its season-opening rout of Hawley on Friday. But the Indians didn’t really have to be — opting instead to spend much of the night running between the tackles in a punishing 34-12 win over the defending 2A DI state champions in the Big Country Preps Game of the Week.
Brayden Shipman rushed for 169 yards and two scores to top a 300-yard Jim Ned ground attack and Gray Beasley added 216 combined yards of rushing and passing to lead the Indians (1-0), who took control of the game midway through the second quarter at Indian Stadium.
HAWLEY — With starting quarterback Rodey Hooper having graduated in the spring, the Hawley Bearcats may have been left scrambling in search for his successor, if not for a stroke of good luck.
As fate would have it, junior Keagan Ables, the son of head coach Mitch Ables, has completed two seasons as Hooper’s backup and at least four years of consistent film study dating back to his middle school years.
Add the fact that Keagan has spent the entire offseason packing on 17 pounds of muscle in the weight room, and the Bearcats essentially have a 6-foot 207-pound assistant coach behind center.
HAWLEY — Where do Mitch Ables and the Hawley Bearcats go from here?
After posting a 16-0 record and a Class 2A DI state title win over Refugio last season, the prospect of improvement offers little margin for error. The Bearcats are 31-1 over the last two years, they’re 64-7 mark over the last five and one may wonder if expectations at HHS can remain realistic in the wake of such remarkable success.
This season, however, could offer a glimpse of how the program will adapt to both a lack of experience and size. The end result may reveal if the Hawley faithful have been able to keep things in perspective.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Clyde-Hawley football scrimmage (44 images)”
Day 4 of Big Country Preps’ 2023 Photo Tour is now in the books, with three more days of shooting yet to come from practice fields throughout the area.
Here are but a few of the images collected Thursday:
Continue reading “Scenes from Big Country Preps Photo Tour Day 4”
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 Aug. 1, 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 Hawley Bearcats s. On Monday we will take a look at the Stamford Bulldogs, followed by the Winters Blizzards on Tuesday.
Continue reading “COUNTDOWN TO TWO-A-DAYS: The Hawley Bearcats … 29 days to two-a-days”
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: 2023 State LineMAN Championships (133 photos)”
ABILENE — Regardless of outcome, Region I-2A was going to send a solid team to the state baseball tournament. It was only a matter of waiting for the results.
In the end, New Home swept Hawley 5-1 and 12-2 on Thursday at Drigger’s Field at McMurry University, clinching its fourth trip to Rock Rock’s Dell Diamond since 2018.
“I knew from the get-go that this would be a good series because we knew Hawley was a good team,” New Home coach Brady Webb said. “All the teams in Hawley’s district with Albany, Anson and Stamford, can all play.
“The ones that make it into the playoffs all have a shot.”
When Westyn Balch takes the mound for Thursday’s regional semifinal series opener against Ropes, he’ll feel right at home.
The Hawley junior is no stranger to setting the tone in a Game 1. Balch has victories over Coleman, Christoval and Stamford this postseason, compiling a 1.87 ERA with 22 strikeouts in 15 innings.
Hawley coach Jamie Seago knows he has three quality starters he can rely on. It’s one of the reasons the Bearcats (23-9) are still playing.
And he also knows what to expect from his left-hander every time out.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Stamford-Hawley baseball regional quarterfinal playoff (86 images)”
ABILENE — For the second time in as many games, the Hawley Bearcats used an overwhelming offensive effort to defeat Stamford and sweep their Region I-2A quarterfinal series.
Pounding out 13 hits at McMurry University on Saturday, the Bearcats eliminated Stamford with a 11-7 win in Game 2. Kason O’Shields was 3 for 5 with three RBIs and Will Scott was 3 for 4 with a double to lead Hawley (22-8) which had opened the series with a 14-4 win on Thursday.
With the win, the Bearcats advance to their fourth regional semifinal under 12th-year coach Jamie Seago. There, they will face Ropesville Ropes at a site and time to be determined.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Hawley-Christoval baseball area round playoff series (154 images)”
At 8:15 on Saturday morning, Hawley baseball coach Jamie Seago thought there was no way that his squad would be able to finish its Region I-2A series with Christoval at Cooper’s Cougar Field, which was saturated by overnight rainfall.
Then he struck out with Coahoma, Lamesa and Abilene Christian and circled back to Cougar Field.
By that point, the outfield had dried out enough to where getting a lunchtime start was a feasible option. All of this happened without his squad knowing how hard Seago was working behind the scenes.
Seago’s hard work paid off as the Bearcats beat Christoval 14-4 in six innings to sweep the Cougars and advance to a regional semifinal showdown with district rival Stamford. The two teams split their season series with Stamford winning 13-2 at Hawley before the Bearcats took a 10-5 win a few weeks later.
AUSTIN — After a slow start in the field events on Friday saw the Big Country net just four medals, things heated up in the evening session when the track events got rolling.
Big Country athletes picked up 10 medals under the lights at Mike A. Meyers Stadium at the University of Texas, giving the area 14 for the day.
On top of that, the Stamford girls team finished in a three-way tie with Refugio and Panhandle with 32 points to claim a share of the state championship. Goldthwaite’s girls finished three points back in fourth.
For the second week in a row, the Hawley Bearcats used big-inning baseball to take control of a tight game in a playoff series opener, pulling within a win of the Region I-2A quarterfinals with 6-3 triumph over Christoval in Game 1 of a best-of-three area-round series Thursday at Abilene Cooper’s Cougar Field.
HHS, which rode back-to-back five-run innings to a 11-1 series-opening win over Coleman last week, used a five-run sixth Thursday to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 6-2 lead that would never be threatened the rest of the way.
The victory improved coach Jamie Seago’s squad to 20-9 on the year and put the Bearcats in the driver’s seat heading into Game 2 at noon Saturday back at Cougar Field.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Coleman-Hawley baseball bi-district playoff”
The Hawley baseball team wasn’t going to make short work of Coleman. Both Mother Nature and the Coleman Bluecats saw to that on Saturday at Drigger’s Field at McMurry University.
Leading their best-of-three 2A bi-district series by a game, Hawley fell 5-3 in rain-delayed Game 2, but recovered with a 10-7 win in Game 3, which ended just short of 1 a.m on Sunday morning.
“It was a great job by both teams, playing this late into the night,” Hawley coach Jamie Seago said. “Both teams fought, but for our guys to pull out a win here is very big for us.”
For 3½ innings, the Coleman and Hawley baseball teams were locked in a pitcher’s duel Friday at McMurry University’s Walt Driggers Field.
But after going to the home half of the fourth tied 1-all, the Bearcats broke loose for five runs in that inning and five more in the next to pull away for an 11-1 run-rule victory in Game1 of a Region I-2A bi-district series.
Hawley collected 10 hits and took advantage of seven Coleman errors to provide far more offense than needed for starter Westyn Balch, who limited the Bluecats to two hits in a complete-game gem to outduel CHS starter Ryland Gentry.
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.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY Hawley-Hamlin softball (59 images)”
HAMLIN — With Stamford clinching the league title on Friday, the only drama remaining in District 7-2A occurred in Hamlin, where the Lady Pipers and Hawley had a second-seed issue to settle in a winner-take-all matchup at Hamlin High.
The Lady Pipers (21-6, 6-2) claimed the No. 2 spot with a 6-3 win behind a solid pitching effort from Zoe Moore, an error-free defense and an 11-hit barrage that saw no fewer than five doubles.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Hawley-Anson baseball (58 images)”
ANSON — With combined totals of six errors, nine walks and five hit batsmen, it didn’t require Casey Stengal to assess that neither Hawley or Anson brought their “A” game to Tuesday’s District 6-2A matchup at AHS.
But after nearly three hours of battling for a higher spot on the league ladder, Hawley emerged as the victor, topping the Tigers 14-9.
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.
While Hawley’s Kason O’Shields is better known for his prowess on a football field, the HHS senior is actually a remarkable all-around athlete who is capable of having an impact in a variety of different sports.
This week is a prime example of that, as O’Shields takes our Big Country Preps Player of the Week award for the week ending February 18.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Albany-Hawley boys basketball (56 images)”
HAWLEY — They are bound to be partying like it’s the 1980s in Hawley this week after a 20-0 game-ending run gave Hawley a 65-47 win over Albany and the outright District 10-2A basketball championship.
It’s the first time the Bearcats have won a district title in boys basketball since 1987.
Kason O’Shields had 17 points in the first quarter and bookended a 37-point night with 12 more points in the fourth quarter to fuel HHS.
As Hawley was plowing through 16 opponents en route to the Class 2A Division I state football championship this past fall, there was only one setback of note attached to the historic season: The Bearcats basketball team had to wait until late December to get its varsity roster intact.
Even then, Mitch Ables, who coaches both sports at the school, had to wait a little while longer for some of his major prospective hoops contributors to recover from injuries sustained on the road to AT&T Stadium, where Hawley crushed Refugio 54-28 in the title game to claim the title.
Luckily for Ables, he didn’t have to wait a second for Teaghan Knight to be ready.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Cisco-Hawley basketball doubleheader (118 images)”
HAWLEY — Hosting Cisco with sole possession of the District 10-2A lead on the line, the Hawley boys basketball team rode a dominant first half to a 65-51 win Monday at Bearcat Gym.
The Bearcats outscored the Loboes 31-13 in the first 16 minutes and stretched their lead to 19 points on two occasions in the third quarter before holding off a furious Cisco rally over the final quarter and a half.
The victory, which followed a 60-41 Cisco win in the girls game, improved the Bearcats (10-4 overall) to 8-1 in 10-2A play, while the Loboes fell to 19-6 on the season and 7-2 in district action. That gives Hawley a one-game lead on CHS and Albany (11-3, 7-2) with three league games remaining.
STAMFORD — A pair of area rivals clashed twice on Friday as the Cisco girls and boys basketball teams paid a visit to Stamford for an important varsity doubleheader in District 10-2A.
The Stamford girls rallied to take the opener, 33-29 to force a first-place tie in the league race. The Cisco boys returned the favor, rallying from a 25-18 halftime deficit behind a brilliant performance from Gavin Landenberger to beat the Bulldogs 59-51 and remain in the district title hunt.
The Loboes remained within a game of first place behind league-leading Hawley with the win.
Due to UIL regulations, photo sales from state championship events are not permitted.
Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Hawley-Refugio football (134 images)”
No one had to tell Hawley running back Austin Cumpton what he missed last year when he was unable to play in the Bearcats’ first-ever state championship game.
In street clothes for that one after fracturing a pair of vertebrae a few weeks earlier, the then-junior witnessed it firsthand as his teammates fell 47-12 to Shiner.
To say that experience was a motivator a year later — for both Cumpton and the Bearcats — might be an understatement. And healthy as a senior, Hawley’s 6-foot-1, 225-pound bowling ball back and his brothers made good on their mission of returning to AT&T Stadium and finishing the job this time.
ARLINGTON — When Hawley played for its first football state championship in school history on Dec. 15, 2021, Mitch Ables was focused on the action on the field.
Fast forward exactly one year.
Back at AT&T Stadium on Thursday, Ables had a different plan — but it was one that he had been working on for far longer than just one day.
ARLINGTON — Whatever doubts some people may have had about Hawley’s ability to overcome Refugio in Thursday’s Class 2A Division I state title game, they were answered by the third quarter at AT&T Stadium.
Opening the game with 28 unanswered points, the Bearcats raced to a 34-7 halftime lead and were never seriously threatened beyond that point in a 54-28 win.
Offensive MVP Austin Cumpton rushed for 151 yards and four scores and Rodey Hooper threw for 279 yards and three more TDs to lift Hawley, which finished a perfect 16-0 while grabbing the first-ever football state championship for HHS.
The Bearcats avenged last season’s title loss to Shiner with the win.
