LAREDO – Boerne Champion had a few ups and downs in its season opener Thursday in Laredo but when the clock hit 0:00, the Chargers defeated United South, 37-27, to give Blane Ellis his first win as a head coach.
Ellis said it was an emotional roller coaster leading up to the game.
“I’ve been emotional all week because this is the place I’ve wanted to be for a long time and this is the opportunity I’ve wanted for a long time and here it is,” he said. “The win means the world to me; this is my dream job.”
At first it looked like the Chargers were going to blow out the Panthers after jumping out to a 23-0 lead before taking a 30-7 advantage into the break.
Champion scored two first-quarter touchdowns behind a pair of Cole Riha runs, the second going 68 yards.
Champion was up 14-0 after one stanza and picked up a safety in the second quarter for the 16-0 lead. Later in the period, Jordan Ballin found Campbell Deberry on a 40-yard strike and the Nathan Bell kick made it 23-0 midway through the second.
After a good kickoff return, the Panthers took advantage of a short field and scored on a 1-yard TD run by David Gonzalez for their first score of the game, but the Chargers answered right before the half after Ballin found Sawyer Bolli in the back of the end zone on a 19-yard completion and the lead was 30-7 at the break.
United South made it interesting in the second half after the Panthers outscored the Chargers 20-7 over the final two quarters and had a chance to make it a one-possession game with 1:08 left after a 5-yard Luis Cisneros TD run cut it to 10 points.
United South went for two instead of kicking but the Champion defense stuffed the two-point conversion attempt and kept the lead at 10 instead of 8.
Ellis gave a lot of credit to the Panthers for slowing them down in the second half. Champion only had one first down on its first three drives before they put together a drive that bridged the third and quarters that basically put the game out of reach after Ballin scampered in from the 10-yard line with 9:35 left.
On its opening drive in the third quarter, Champion went for it on 4th and 1 deep in Panthers’ territory and didn’t convert and struggled from there until the Ballin TD run.
“I thought we had a strong start to the game and executed well but in that second half we didn’t execute on our first drive and we have to be better on our execution and finish drives,” Ellis said. “That (4th-down) play kind of changed momentum and gave them a little bit of life, but our guys did a good job of not hitting the panic button and hung in there and finished well.”
Champion did have two costly fumbles, one in the first half after going deep into Panthers territory, and the other late in the fourth as they were trying to kill the clock.
Defensively, they got beat a few times down the field but Ellis said he’s not worried about any of that because all of it is fixable.
“It was good to see some of that stuff, it’s stuff to work on,” he said. “I’m glad we saw that because now we have a vision for what we need to do to be better.”
Riha said the bottom line is that they won and was glad they were able to give Ellis his first victory as a Chargers coach.
“He’s a great coach and we’ve been working all summer, coming together as a team,” he said. “We played as team tonight and we did great.”
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