Last night, I was at Cowboys stadium in Arlington for the 5A Division II high school football state championship between our Steele Knights and the Spring Dekaney Wildcats. This was the 9th game played at the stadium since Thursday! Pretty cool to have one location for most of the championship games!
I left yesterday at 9:30am and got home today at 2:30pm. I ended up driving alone; I would have gone with someone but I thought it may rain and if that happens, I would rather drive my car than someone else’s car. I even bought new wiper blades! See, I was prepared and it didn’t even rain! Just cool and cloudy.
One thing I really don’t understand is why people speed. I was in the slow lane going the speed limit and everybody was passing me up. What is the big rush? This may become a topic for a blog post.
I met up with Mark Kusenberger at the hotel so we could drive together to the stadium. We were given 2 parking passes and I didn’t want to be bothered with the hassle to find a parking space. Our hike from the parking lot to the press box seemed like a mile!
Our press box was very large and we had a really long flat surface for all of our equipment. Bobby was already there and had everything setup. He even had his dad and son with him.
I had my area on the left side but moved to the right side so I could be closer to Bobby. Most stadiums press boxes are at the 50 yard line; at Cowboys stadium, they are located in the corner of the end zone which makes it difficult to figure out yardage! There is a huge monitor dangling from the roof which helps a bit. One thing I really liked about our vantage point is you can see the whole field for open players and holes on both teams.
Spring Dekaney is from the Spring Independent School District which serves a small portion of Houston and the community of Spring. Dekaney opened its doors in 2007 for students and teachers. In 2008 they played there first varsity football season and went winless. This year, they made there playoff debut and have gotten all the way to a state championship game!
Spring Dekaney has a running back named Trey Williams who committed to play at Texas A&M. Trey has 3687 yards rushing and 46 touchdowns! Those are monster numbers! Wow! Jarrett Irving is a cornerback, backup quarterback, and punt/kick off returner and he committed to play at Houston.
Steele’s quarterback, Tommy Armstrong committed to play for Nebraska. Tommy has 3096 total yards (1246 rushing and 1850 passing) and 43 touchdowns and 0 interceptions! Matt Mayle is the leading receiver with 37 catches for 889 yards and 11 touchdowns. Justin Stockton is the leading rusher with 153 carries for 1474 yards and 13 touchdowns.
I was excited for this game but also sad as I knew this will be my last football game till next August.
The game prior to our game had about 40,000 fans! That is probably because one of the teams was from the Dallas area! I wish those fans would have stuck around for our game. We had about 15,000 fans; Cowboys stadium kinda looked empty!
I saw some you tube highlights of Trey Williams and I was excited to see him live. I knew this was going to be a great game. I mean these are the last teams playing!!
In the first quarter, Dekaney muffed a Steele punt and Steele recovered in the red zone. On that drive, Tommy Armstrong threw a 19 yard touchdown reception to Matt Mayle. Just like that, Steele led 7-0 with 9:14 remaining in the quarter. The Steele defense stopped Dekaney on a 4th and goal from the 1 yard line and contained Trey Williams to very little yardage.
Steele was looking sharp on defense, but the offense was really struggling. They had a 7-0 lead after 12 minutes!
The second quarter was all Dekaney. On one drive, Dekaney had 4 consecutive false start penalties. This was in large part credited to the Steele band! They knew when to play and when they did, it was very loud!!! Despite those penalties, Dekaney scored on a 40 yard touchdown reception from D’Juan Hines, the quarterback, to Austin Garrett, the wide receiver. So, we are tied at 7!! The Steele offense is really struggling. They can’t do anything. Gotta give a lot of props to the Wildcat defense. Wow! Dekaney takes a 14-7 lead when Trey Williams finishes an 8 play 59 yard drive with a 2 yard touchdown run. Tommy Armstrong, the Steele quarterback, throws a pass and it is caught by Jarrett Irving, a cornerback for Dekaney who returns it 60 yards! Hey, that is Tommy’s first interception of the season. Crap!! Next play, Trey Williams runs 24 yards for a touchdown.
Halftime score is 20-7 Spring Dekaney. Wow! This is not looking good.
Spring Dekaney ran 26 plays for 147 yards. Trey Williams had 17 carries for 63 yards and 2 touchdowns. The quarterback, D’Juan Hines, had 63 total yards and 1 touchdown.
Steele ran 21 plays for 74 yards. Tommy Armstrong had 50 total yards and 1 touchdown and 1 interception. Stockton had 7 carries for 19 yards. This is not Steele football! They looked stifled on offense.
Someone provided Mark and Bobby with a printout of halftime stats. I am not sure who these stats came from but I compared them with my numbers and and the only difference was 1 total yard!!! Wow, I guess I am good at what I do! Also pretty good from my vantage point when I had to guess a lot of yardage!
Steele had a 10 play drive that took 6:02 in the third quarter but it failed to produce any points. Dekaney was also held scoreless.
We are down to the final 12 minutes in the football season. This is going be some finish! Wow!
Trey Williams wanted no part of an amazing finish. On one drive, he scampered 60 yards. Sean Horn, a running back, finished that same drive with a 2 yard touchdown reception. Oh no, Dekaney leads 27-7! Come on Steele, get the comeback started now! It took Steele 1:22 to go 68 yards and score on a 22 yard touchdown reception from Armstrong to Mayle! Wow! Score is now 27-14 with 4 minutes left! Trey Williams again wanted no part of an amazing finish. He put the game away as he ran 24 yards for his 3rd touchdown of the evening! Tommy Armstrong’s last pass of his high school football career was caught by Jarrett Irving again (his 2nd pick)!
Final Score is 34-14 Spring Dekaney!
Trey Williams finished the game with 27 carries for 185 yards and 3 touchdowns. D’Juan Hines, the Dekaney quarterback, completed 2 of 5 passes and both completions were touchdowns.
Steele finished the game with 42 plays for 165 yards! This would normally be one quarter for Steele. Justin Stockton, the running backed, had 12 carries for 25 yards. Tommy Armstrong, the quarterback, had 11 carries for 35 yards. He also was 8 of 18 passing for 95 yards with 2 touchdowns and 2 interceptions (these were the only interceptions this season). Matt Mayle, a wide receiver, had 3 catches for 42 yards and 2 touchdowns.
Our player of the game went to Jarrett Irving of Spring Dekaney. He had both interceptions and several key tackles. His first interception toward the end of the second quarter led to a Trey Williams rushing touchdown and that put the Wildcats up by 13.
I am pretty sure this was a really tough loss for Steele, but they will be back next season. They will lose Tommy to Nebraska. Stockton and Mayle will be returning and a lot of young kids got some varsity playing time.
When the game ended, there were players, coaches, reporters, UIL officials, and Cowboys officials on the field. I was watching the post game festivities and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a golf cart going really fast on the field; nobody was driving it and it plowed into a group of reporters who were interviewing the coach from Dekaney. That was really strange. When I got home this afternoon, it was the main story on yahoo! ESPN has a better shot of what happened. I have a picture of someone chasing it about 15 yards before it hits a group of people. I really hope the people who got injured are OK. I am also glad our sideline reporter Ron Gray wasn’t hurt!
What a fantastic way to end the 2011 high school football season!!!!!!!!!!!!!