Hondo Anvil Herald

Owls finally get rolling, trample Cats

 

By Jeff Berger

Anvil Herald Publisher

 

     Carrizo Springs -- The scoreboard wasn’t a great indicator, but the Hondo Owls didn’t get out to a really fast start last Friday, Sept. 6.

“It was kind of a slow, sloppy start,” said Owl head football coach Dustin Templin. “But there are games where the offense has to lean on the defense, and games where the defense leans on the offense.”

     Friday’s game at Frank Carter Stadium was one of the former. 

     The Owl defense kept the Wildcats in check while the offense found its stride. 

     And the stride resulted in a dominating 40-6 win that lifted the Owls to a 2-0 start.

     This Friday, Sept. 13, the team returns home to Barry Field where they’ll go up against Uvalde, also 2-0, for the 100th time. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.

     Hondo’s first possession never had a chance to get off the ground. A second down run by Mason Barr was blown dead by an inadvertent whistle, just as the junior running back was breaking free. A mishandled snap and a delay of game penalty led to a Hondo punt. The snap went over the head of punter DJ Richter, who managed to scramble for 13 yards on a 4th-and-14.

The ball went over to the Wildcats near mdifield, but a thunderous hit by Owl sophomore Lyston Blanks knocked the ball loose, and teammate Jerry Guevara recovered. 

     That good fortune was short-lived as Carrizo recorded its only takeaway of the night, an interception in the left flat.

Again, the Owl defense had come to play. Guevara and Kolten Alvarez both had big stops, forcing a Wildcat punt. The badly-shanked – but not blocked – kick traveled minus-7 yards, and the Owls took over at the CS 37. Breaking out of their doldrums on a 4th-and-9, the Owls found a good scoring formula, as Richter passed 36 yards to Nolan Riff for a Hondo touchdown. The two would connect for three TD passes on the night, giving them five as a tandem through the first two weeks. Leonard Cruz kicked the extra point and Hondo had a 7-0 lead with 5:41 left in the opening period.

     After a Jorden Bendele tackle deep in Wildcat territory on the kickoff, the defense stepped up again. Blanks knocked loose another fumble, which Mason Martinez recovered at the 11.

     One play later, and just 20 seconds after their last connection, Richter found Riff for the scoring pass. The Wildcats blocked the PAT, leaving the score at 13-0.

     It stayed there until late in the second period. Starting at their 35, the Owls put together a seven-play scoring drive. Barr, a region-qualifying pole vaulter in the spring, dazzled the crowd with a high-flying flip over a defender on a 14-yard gain to the Carrizo 45.

“We’ve told him not to do that,” Coach Templin affirmed.

     Richter then found Riff for 11 yards. Barr carried twice more for 12 more yards, with a face mask penalty moving the ball to the 11. After a pass interference penalty in the endzone, Richter kept it for two yards to the endzone for a 20-0 lead with 1:38 left in the half.

     To open the third quarter, the Wildcats’ Jacee Carrizales broke away for 57 yards, cutting the Owls’ lead to 14 points with just 58 seconds gone in the half.

     Hondo answered quickly, just as they did in the season opener against Blanco.

     It took just three plays, but Richter found Riff deep over the middle, and the receiver outran the defense to the end zone for a 26-6 lead.

     On Carrizo’s first play after the kickoff, the ball came out again, and sophomore Andrew Tapia recovered for Hondo at the 23-yard line. 

     Facing a 3rd-and-1, Richter passed to Barr for a 14-yard score with 8:14 still to play in the third. Cruz tacked on the PAT for a 33-6 lead.

     The scoring toss was the fourth of the game, and ninth of the young season, for Richter.

     Late in the quarter, the Wildcats put together their only sustained drive of the night, marching from their own 26  all the way to a first down at the Hondo 8. The drive went backwards from there, and on an attempted reverse pass, heavy pressure from Cruz forced James Botello into a hurried throw, which Josiah Quintanilla intercepted at the 26.

     From there, Hondo put together its best drive of the night. Running eight plays, all on the ground, and picking up six first downs, Tapia capped it off with a six-yard run for his first career TD with 6:57 to play. Cruz connected on his fourth PAT of the night.

“We challenged the offensive line at halftime,” Coach Templin said. “We have the size, but just hadn’t had the execution we were looking for, and Carrizo had challenged us with a lot of different defensive fronts. On that last drive, we didn’t have any busted assignments. The line looked good as a unit.”