Seminole 43, Big Spring 16 — Jacob Gonzales passed for 262 yards and three touchdowns, and Buddha Guerra ran for 140 yards and three scores to lead the Indians to a comfortable win over the Steers.
Guerra also received for 67 yards and a TD to help Seminole (4-3, 2-0) build a 36-2 lead by halftime.
Pecos 33, Big Spring 24 — The Eagles outscored the Steers 26-14 over the final three quarters to rally for a two-score win in the district opener for both teams.
Pecos (4-2, 1-0), which ran for two touchdowns, passed for two touchdowns and hit a pair of field goals, pulled ahead 20-17 by halftime and extended that advantage to 30-24 by the start of the fourth quarter.
Big Spring 27, San Angelo Lake View 20 (OT) — Javon Jackson passed for one touchdown and ran for two others — the first to tie the game late in the fourth quarter and the second to give his team a lead in overtime — to lift the Steers to their first win of the season and the Stacey Martin era.
Big Spring (1-4) led 7-6 at halftime and 13-6 in the third quarter, before Lake View rallied to take a 20-13 lead on an Isaiah Rivera pick-six with 4:51 remaining in the game. But Jackson leveled the score with a 12-yard TD run with 1:13 to play and busted loose for a 25-yard scoring run on the Steers’ first play of overtime.
SWEETWATER — Ever since he took over as the head football coach at Snyder 2½ years ago, Anthony Gonzales has wanted to make sure that the Tigers renewed their rivalry game against Sweetwater.
It’s a game that even players have told him during end-of-season interviews that they wanted to play.
For 12 minutes on Friday night at the Mustang Bowl, it appeared as though the 72nd regular season meeting between the teams might be the type of competitive game that would be talked about for years to come.
But the 2026 meeting became more memorable for the Mustang faithful after Sweetwater used a 45-point second quarter to claim an 83-20 homecoming win in a game Snyder led by one after the first quarter.
Snyder 8, Andrews 3 — The Tigers broke through for their first victory of the season, winning a defensive slugfest on homecoming to snap a 21-game losing streak dating back to Sept. 6, 2024.
Trailing 3-0 after allowing a field goal early in the second quarter, coach Anthony Gonzales’ Tigers (1-3) responded with eight unanswered points to take an 8-3 lead into halftime that would stand the rest of the way.
Sweetwater 42, Big Spring 21 — The Mustangs were too much for the Steers, increasing a 28-7 halftime lead to 35 points in the fourth quarter before settling for a three-touchdown win.
Big Spring, which fell to 0-3, ran for just 23 yards in the loss, getting a team high 30 yards and one TD from Jaylen Cooper. Javon Jackson added 141 yards and two TDs through the air — both to Jaydan Thomas, who caught 10 passes for 136 yards.
Andrews 42, Big Spring 34 — Tommy Evans ran for 242 yards and four touchdowns, including three in the final 10 minutes, to lead the Mustangs to a remarkable comeback win over the Steers.
Big Spring, which got 172 yards and two touchdowns passing from Javon Jackson and TDs from both its special teams (blocked punt return) and defense (interception return), stretched a 21-14 halftime lead to 34-14 by the 10:26 mark of the fourth quarter. But Andrews, which also got 161 yards rushing from Blas Hernandez, scored the game’s final four touchdowns, taking a 35-34 lead on Evans’ final score with 5:37 to play before icing the game with a Jorge Rodriguez TD run with just under two minutes remaining.
El Paso Ysleta 30, Big Spring 22 — Colin Mikels ran for 157 yards and a touchdown, and Javon Jackson passed for 96 yards and ran for 69 more and two scores, but it wasn’t enough to lift the Steers to a win in coach Stacey Martin’s Big Spring debut.
Ysleta raced out to a 14-7 halftime lead and stretched that to 22-7 by the start of the fourth quarter, when BSHS tried to rally came up a touchdown short.
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 15 quarterbacks with a list of others to watch in 2026.
We hope you enjoy this list and that you’ve enjoyed our position rankings as we get set to kick off a new season.
As we wind down our eight-part preseason position rankings series, we arrive finally at the Big Country’s top ball-carriers.
After breaking down this year’s crop of receivers and tight ends earlier today, we move now to the area’s top backs, ranking our top 15 with a list of others to watch in 2026. Don’t forget to check in tomorrow when we conclude our series with the top 10 area quarterbacks.
We hope you enjoy this 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 receivers.
After starting the offensive portion of our series with the linemen, we now shift our attention to the playmakers on the perimeter, ranking our top 15 wideouts/tight ends with a list of others to watch in 2026.
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 behind us, it’s time to look at the area’s top offensive players. 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 trenches, ranking the Big Country’s top 15 offensive linemen with a list of others to watch in 2026.
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 2026 season.
After starting with the linemen and linebackers, we turn to the defensive backfield 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 shift our focus to the secondary, giving our list of the area’s top 15 defensive backs and others to look out for in 2026.
We hope you enjoy our list.
After taking a look at the Big Country’s top defensive linemen last night, it’s now time to examine those who will backing them in 2026.
Continuing with Big Country Preps’ eight-part preseason position rankings series, here’s our top 15 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 around the corner, it’s time to take a look at the players who will be making the biggest impact in 2026.
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 15 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.
Continue reading “Big Country Preps Preseason Football Position Rankings: Defensive Linemen”
The time has arrived for us to make our Big Country predictions, district-by-district.
Several weeks of research and two solid months of summertime labor have gone into this, so we’re more than ready to post it.
With that please dive in and study our take on the upcoming season, along with the more than 80 preseason stories we posted earlier today. Enjoy! We’ll see you on the road!
SNYDER — Anthony Gonzales had already built a struggling program at Lovington N.M. into a three-time state champion. He had things rolling in the Land of Enchantment and as far as many were concerned, he had no reason to leave.
Several calls came in, inviting him to more lucrative settings. But the answer was always “no thank you.”
That is, until Snyder called. The Tigers were struggling, but had demonstrated in the past that they were capable of a high level of success. And to the surprise of many, Gonzales took the gig, accepting the challenges of low numbers, a lack of culture and the Texas pressure cooker all in one fell swoop.
We now converse with Gonzales about his experience thus far in Snyder (1-19 through two seasons) and what he’s hoping to build in this Big Country Preps Q&A.
SNYDER — Two years into the rebuilding project at Snyder, coach Anthony Gonzales and the Tigers are showing signs of setting a firm, lasting foundation.
While the Tigers are 1-19 under Gonzales including a 0-10 mark last year, Snyder was 6-4 at the JV level and its freshman team was 7-3. As those players begin rising through the ranks, they bring with them a culture of winning that the program will need to begin taking a significant step forward.
“They’re starting to figure things out,” Gonzales said. “We’ve got a good group of young kids with a few sophomores who can help us right now and we’ve got some good JV kids who can fill some holes for us.”
But it gets even better than that. Snyder is now welcoming a group of freshmen on campus that lost only two games in two seasons of middle school football. In other words, the Tigers are on the cusp of a talent upswing the likes of which has been unseen in several years at SHS.
If that youthful talent is to have an impact however, the Tigers must quickly develop a new quarterback and running back while playing an extremely difficult non-district schedule. This, with a team featuring only about seven impact seniors, with standout WR/DB Ethan Rios having graduated.
Here are our second-team selections for the 2026 All-Big Country Preps baseball team. For the rest of this year’s selections, click the links below.
Here are our second-team selections for the 2026 All-Big Country Preps baseball team. For the rest of this year’s selections, click the links below.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to release our 2026 All-Big Country Preps baseball teams.
Here, you will find our Rising Stars Team honoring the top freshmen and sophomores in the Big Country.
For the rest of this year’s baseball selections, please click the links below.
Here are our first-team selections for the 2026 All-Big Country Preps softball team. For the rest of this year’s selections, click the links below.
Here are our second-team selections for the 2026 All-Big Country Preps softball team. For the rest of this year’s selections, click the links below.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to release our 2026 All-Big Country Preps Softball teams.
Here, you will find our Rising Stars Team honoring the top freshmen and sophomores in the Big Country.
For the rest of this year’s softball selections, please click the links below.
