A NEW WEEK AND MORE NEW ADDITIONS

Another week of football gets underway tonight…and that means more additions to the LSN family!

We are pleased and proud to welcome the Pine Tree Pirates, the Port Arthur Memorial Titans and Pasadena ISD into Legacy fold…and this week you can hear them all right here!

This week marks the season opener for the Pine Tree Pirates out of district 14-4A against Henderson from district 16-3A (dropped from 4A in the UIL reclassification). District 16-3A may arguably be the toughest 3A district in the state, with defending champs Gilmer and Carthage, as well as Pittsburg, who made a deep playoff run last year.

Henderson is 1-0 after beating Class 4A Mount Pleasant last week, 47-19. The game this week may be something of a reunion. The Lions are coached by Dickey Meeks who was formerly the head coach at Pine Tree several years ago.

Expect the Pirates to play hard all season with one key goal always at the forefront: find a way to slow down the other team. Observers say that just about every team they play will be bigger, faster and stronger. But Pine Tree is trying to build momentum, so they will try to make something good happen and feed off that.

Huey Chancellor is the Pirates’ head coach. He begins his second year after coming over from Bellville, where he had only one losing season in 13 years.

Speaking of no losing seasons, our veteran Mark McLain calls all the Pine Tree play-by-play this year for the LSN, beginning Friday night at 7:00 PM.

Port Arthur Memorial had an exciting team last year that produced an upset of North Shore and gave The Woodlands a run for their money. The Titans have bigger expectations in a tough District 21-5A this year. The realigned district will still include state-ranked opponents in Galena Park North Shore and Beaumont West Brook, but the La Porte Bulldogs have moved in as well, and the fight for playoff seeds will be interesting every week.

Memorial’s defense should be a strong suit again this year, but they’ll look to their offense to turn the ball over less and turn more of their drives into scores.

The Titans opened up last week with a huge win over Beaumont Central, 38-0, at home. Terrence Singleton rushed for 100 yards with two TDs and threw for another 114 yards on 9-of-14 passing. Nathan Holmes added 124 rushing yards as Memorial posted 467 yards of total offense.

This week, they travel to Beaumont to another District 20-4A squad, the Ozen Panthers. Ozen lost to West Brook, 28-6, in their opener last week.

LSN rolls out the Pasadena ISD Game of the Week on Friday night. Each week, a PISD school will be featured on the LSN. This week, the South Houston Trojans host the Baytown Sterling Rangers in a Class 5A matchup.

Last week Sterling defeated cross-town rival Baytown Lee, 28-20, in a contest that formerly was a district game but now will be a non-district grudge match since Lee was reclassified as a Class 4A school this year. South Houston will have to figure out a way to put the brakes on the Rangers’ rushing attack, which amassed 244 yards against Lee.

South Houston, meanwhile, tries to rebound from a tough opening-week loss to Atascocita, 38-18. The Eagles, who will be a very tough team out of District 14-5A this year, took advantage of some critical Trojan turnovers to post 24 unanswered points in the second quarter, which spelled the difference in the game. Surprisingly, the Trojans’ offense outmatched Atascocita yard-for-yard on offense, putting up 331 total yards of offense to 309 for the Eagles. But four turnovers hurt them.

We’ll listen this week to see if South Houston cuts down on them and picks up their first win.

Of course, there are more than a dozen other games this week on the LSN, including our 1560 Game of the Week between the Houston Memorial Mustangs and the Westfield Mustangs. These two schools are always in the mix when playoff time rolls around and this year should be no exception. This Friday’s game should be a good early-season test for both squads.

Still building the legacy one game at a time…only a little quicker now!