I am telling you now, the O’Connor Panthers will have an opportunity to make a long playoff run this season. They are young and bring back a lot of experience.
On offense, Tre Johnson will get most of the touches; he is fast. Last season, he had 96 carries for 835 yards and 7 touchdowns and 40 receptions for 529 yards and 3 touchdowns despite missing a few games for an injury. Allan Wright, the starting quarterback last season, will switch to wide receiver and defensive back; he is extremely athletic. The new quarterback will be Zach Galindo, who in the few games he played last season was very impressive. O’Connor also has a smart and crafty fullback named Billy Craft (no pun intended)!
On defense, you are going to see, hear, and read the names of Luke Farmer and Daniel Stautzenberger a lot. Daniel is related to my radio boss, Bobby Stautzenberger.
Last season, I worked 4 O’Connor games. The most exciting was Week 10 when they played the Clark Cougars; winner goes to playoffs and loser goes home! In that game, Zach Galindo made his first start at quarterback and he looked like a veteran on the field. The Panthers beat the Clark Cougars that evening but lost to the Reagan Rattlers in the 2nd round of the playoffs.
Oh, how can I not mention that a former O’Connor player has what I consider the best name for a High School football player…you ready, make sure you aren’t eating and drinking…TJ Horny!!! He was the running back and quarterback in 2004 and 2005. On that same team was someone who I later worked with at WAMU/Chase Bank. I remember seeing his name at work and remembered writing it on my stat board! That was a fun conversation when I told him who I was and that I saw you play football. What a small world?
I love working the Archie Bunker Bowl (Mark Kusenberger came up with that brilliant name). It is always a playoff game between Corpus Christi Carroll and San Antonio O’Connor. We even have a picture of Carroll O’Connor in the booth.
Danny Padron, the previous head coach at O’Connor was an assistant coach at Clark High school when I was a student there; this goes back to 1991. While still at Clark in 2003, his son Andy Padron was the starting quarterback for Clark and during one particular game, the radio broadcaster Roland Jay, kept mispronouncing Padron as Pardon! We got corrected in the booth by Andy’s mother!!!
Danny is now the head coach at Texas Lutheran University and Andy is one of the assistant’s.
There is one coach on the current O’Connor staff that was also at Hobby Middle school and Clark High school when I was a student, John Astoria. Coach Astoria was my physical education teacher at Hobby and my biology teacher at Clark. In that biology class, I was verbally bullied by two other students (they never touched me and if they had, they would’ve been suspended or expelled). Most of the time I was able to ignore them, but there were a few times where I had to get Coach Astoria to help me. Thanks Coach! I don’t even think I told my parents cause again there was no physical or sexual abuse.
Stay tuned for the number 6 team next week.