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This Week in HS Sports - August
26, 2009
On Friday night, Brett Mills, Jeremy Branham
and I kick-off our inaugural season of the 1560 Game of the
Week (on KGOW 1560-AM, of course) at Crusader Stadium on the
campus of Strake Jesuit College Prep. Strake faces off
against St. Thomas and there will be a lot of interesting
subplots to this game.
Ron Counter’s Strake team is coming off a 2008 district
championship in District 18-5A, but they lost some key
contributors on both sides of the ball that they have to
replace. Notably, 2008 QB James Scott is gone to SMU, and
Coach Counter says that, for the first time in his career,
he doesn’t know who his clear-cut No. 1 signal caller will
be. We’ll likely see two—and possibly three—players take
snaps under center for the Crusaders on Friday night.
Strake has also had to deal with more than their share of
adversity in the weeks leading up to the season. They’ve
lost some players to injury, and beyond that, they’ve had
two players who have had to deal with health issues that go
far beyond the average ankle sprain or bruised ribs.
Defensive lineman Kaosi Egbunike has been diagnosed with and
treated for a heart condition. While he won’t be available
on Friday, Egbunike is, by all accounts, recovering well and
even has hopes of playing football this season.
Also, TE/DE Bucky Ribbeck has been diagnosed with a form of
cancer known as Ewing’s Sarcoma and had surgery related to
that on Monday. Doctors were to remove a portion of bone
from his arm in an effort to contain the disease and prevent
further spreading. He has already been receiving
chemotherapy treatments as well.
Here’s an interesting sidebar to the story. Doctors had
originally advised Ribbeck and his family that they were
going to do the surgery this Friday, August 28, but Bucky
and his parents said that they wouldn’t schedule it for that
date because that was the St. Thomas game date! So the
doctors figured out a way to re-schedule it for the
preceding Monday.
Though his physicians have firmly maintained that there is a
3-5 day hospital stay associated with the recovery from the
surgery, Counter says that Ribbeck, who will be one of the
Strake co-captains this season, is determined to be on the
sideline for the game on Friday night.
If that happens, you have to think that Strake will
definitely receive an emotional boost from it.
Beyond the obvious health concerns, Ribbeck’s absence as a
defender will be felt. The Crusaders will likely start just
two seniors on defense, with a good likelihood that one or
two sophomores will be among the starting 11 on that side of
the ball. Counter says he can’t recall ever being that young
on defense with any other team he’s had. Because of that,
the pre-district schedule—St. Thomas, Clear Lake and Clear
Brook—will be crucial to building the experience level of
that unit.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town…
St. Thomas gets ready to begin the second season of the
Donald Hollas era. Season One didn’t go quite according to
script.
The 2008 Eagles finished the season 2-6 and were winless in
TAPPS District 3-Division I play. But they were adversely
affected (like most of the teams in the greater Houston
area) by Hurricane Ike. Not only did they lose a pair of
games that might have been wins, they lost a lot of practice
reps in September, which were critical for a young team
trying to learn a new system. While they showed some
glimpses of potential, they just never could get off the
ground.
This season, the team has the benefit of a full season in
Coach Hollas’ system, but they will also be a team looking
for some on-field leadership. Gone is Conor Mills, who
stepped in at QB last season and filled the spot admirably.
Gone are others like John Reed, Nick Larrow, Armando Rocha,
Kyle Rynd and others who were key contributors in Hollas’
first season.
Brett Mills has seen the Eagles in their pre-season workouts
and scrimmages and reports that the comfort level in the
offensive scheme appears to be good. They, too, will have a
battle at QB, and we expect to see both senior Scooter Fisch
and sophomore Hunter Kopycinski take some snaps on Friday
night.
Returning starters Byron Henry and Connor Biggio will give
those QBs some experienced receivers to throw to. St. Thomas
will run the spread offense, so we’ll watch how they’re able
to move the ball as one of the measuring sticks of their
progress.
In 2008, the Eagle defense also experienced some rough
times, especially in district games against St. Pius and
Bishop Kelly, and they will hope to make some positive
strides this year.
They will again play Pius and Kelly twice (home-and-home)
for their four district contests. That leaves six
pre-district tune-ups: Strake, Vidor, Magnolia West, Santa
Fe, Del Valle and St. John. If Coach Hollas could finish his
second season with a .500 record, you’d have to think that
would be a major step forward for the Eagle program.
St. Thomas has the added motivation of trying to end a
losing streak to Strake. The Crusaders have defeated the
Eagles 11 consecutive years, the last St. Thomas victory
coming in 1996. That means Ron Counter, starting his
eleventh season as the head coach at Strake, has never lost
to St. Thomas. In recent seasons, it really hasn’t been
close. Since 2003, Strake has outscored St. Thomas, 238-39.
That’s an average score of 40-7.
Don’t expect that kind of domination this week, though.
These teams are likely as evenly matched as they have been
in a long, long time.
* * * * *
We’ve also got a Hurricane-Ike game this week. Hightower
Hurricanes
and Eisenhower ‘Ike’
Eagles. Get it? (SORRY! I’ve been saving that one for a long
time!)
On Saturday, Michael Silvers, Brent Moody and Jerrell Branch
begin our second season of Saturday Night Football on the
Voice of Texas on KSEV 700-AM. Branch joins the pair that
called the Class 5A Division 1 state championship game last
December at Reliant Stadium. That game featured the
Hightower Hurricanes against the Allen Eagles.
So, that means that the crew will be doing back-to-back
Hightower games, as Michael, Brent and Jerrell head out to
Thorne Stadium in the Aldine ISD to broadcast the Hurricanes
vs. the Eagles. (So what if there’s been eight months in
between broadcasts?) And it will be interesting to see if
the ‘Canes pick up where they left off in Shane Hallmark’s
first season.
Hallmark, who took over the reins of the Hightower program
after Gene Johnson left following the 2007 season to assume
the head coach/campus coordinator position at Cypress Ranch
High School, almost managed to pull off an undefeated first
season. Allen held off Hightower for a 21-14 win in the
5A-D1 championship.
Still at a school that has seen success on the football
field from its inception, Hallmark already has the highest
winning percentage as a head coach in the program’s history
(.928, 13-1). Of course, his predecessors—Johnson and Kevin
O’Keefe (now at Seven Lakes)—had very good win-loss records
too.
And though it’s an abbreviated history, it is short and
sweet. Since the school began playing varsity football in
2000, Hightower has won 80 games (ranked 16th in Class 5A
for number of wins in this decade) and posted a winning
percentage of .721 (80-31, ranked 18th in Class 5A in this
decade). That puts them in the company of older stalwarts
like North Shore, Katy, Southlake Carroll, Euless Trinity,
Austin Westlake, Converse Judson and Spring Westfield, to
name just a few.
The Hurricane program has never had a losing season. In
2005, they went 5-5; they defeated the Bush Broncos in their
final game that season to attain the .500 mark. That was
also the only season in school history that Hightower hasn’t
sent a team to the playoffs.
Plain and simple: Hightower has become a Houston-area
football powerhouse.
In 2009, the ‘Canes will have to replace some significant
contributors. The Hightower 2008 senior class may one day be
known as a college all-star team: AJ Highsmith, Darius
Johnson, Colton Valencia, Dele Junaid and 28 other lettermen
graduated last spring. Still, experts around the area and
state feel that the ‘Canes have enough talent returning to
be one of the quality teams in 2009.
Eisenhower’s football pedigree is no slouch either. What
Hightower has been in the 2000s, Eisenhower was in the
1990s. Their overall record in the final decade of the 20th
century was 86-36-3. They made playoff appearances in seven
of the 10 seasons.
The Eagles made it to the state semifinal game on four
occasions—each time getting bumped from the playoffs by
Converse Judson—before they eventually played in the Class
5A Division 1 1999 state championship, which they lost to
Midland Lee, 42-21. In 1993—in the land before overtime—the
Eagles play the Rockets to a 27-27 tie in the state semi,
but Judson advanced on the dreaded penetrations.
Ike has been good for a long time, too. Beginning with the
1992 season, Eisenhower has sent a team to the Class 5A
playoffs in 14 of the 17 seasons. In this decade alone,
they’ve fielded a playoff team in seven of the nine seasons
so far. But, they haven’t made it past the second round
since 2002.
Last year Hightower won the first-ever meeting between these
two schools 35-21, also on the opening weekend. We should
get a nice idea of what kind of teams both these schools
have in 2009 from our Saturday night matchup.
* * * * *
We’ve got even more at the website this week. St Pius and
Westbury, both under new head coaches, will square off on
Friday night. Over in the Golden Triangle, the Nederland
Bulldogs and West Orange-Stark Mustangs will tee it up for
what should be a hard-hitting, hotly-contested game. And in
Central Texas, the Groesbeck Goats open their season against
the Madisonville Mustangs. LSN teams up with Massey
Broadcasting to bring you the action there.
We’ve got great football from all over the state this
weekend. Whether we see you at the stadium or at the
website, Week 0 should be very entertaining!
Previous stories
:
August 15, 2009
August
20, 2009 |
