Champion stayed undefeated this year after the Chargers rallied past visiting Eagle Pass Friday at BISD Stadium in its home opener, 27-26.
The Chargers outscored the Eagles in the second half, 20-7, and a couple of missed extra points by Eagle Pass also helped.
“That was exciting, hats off to Eagle Pass, they’re such a good team, they’re very well coached and they came in ready to go,” Champion coach Blane Ellis said. “We had a better second half than we did last week and our guys delivered in the second half.”
The Chargers improve to 2-0 and visit Canyon Lake Friday to close out non-district play.
Champion had the first score of the game and the last one as well, and in between, it was a wild one.
After Jordan Ballin hit Sawyer Bolli on an 18-yard TD pass, the Chargers were up 7-0 after the Nathan Bell kick, but Eagle Pass tallied a flurry of points with 19 straight and held a 19-7 lead with 1:26 left before halftime but did miss those two extra points.
The Eagles’ Andres Garcia ran for a score and then Garcia tossed touchdown passes to Jose Hernandez in the second quarter.
Garcia got loose a few times with some nice runs and then hurt the Champion defense with his arm in that first half, but Ellis said their main adjustment at halftime was to slow the Eagles’ QB down.
“We made a couple of adjustments and shut down their run game and it made them one dimensional and it allowed us to get better pressure on them,” he said. “There were great adjustments by (defensive coordinator) Coach Ford there.”
In the third, Cameron Logan hauled in a short pass from Ballin and then later in the quarter, Cole Riha found pay dirt on a 15-yard run, but in between the two Charger scores, the Eagles hit a 75-yard bomb and the period ended with Eagle Pass leading 26-20.
In the final stanza, the Eagles drove down to the Champion 3-yard line but the defense stuffed the drive after Grant Menzies came up with a fumble recovery to turn the visitors away.
After both teams punted, the Chargers took over with 3:48 left. That’s when Ballin found a wide-open Campbell Deberry on a 57-yard bomb down the Champion sideline and the Chargers were leading for the first time since the first quarter, 27-26.
Eagle Pass had the ball two more times and went for it on 4th and 10 and didn’t convert. On its final possession, they started at their own 3-yard line after a Ballin punt was downed by Hudson Simmons and forced the Eagles to go 97 yards with 35 ticks on the clock.
From there, Champion’s defense rose to the occasion one more time and held the Eagles to just a few yards on the drive before the clock ran out.
Ellis said it was about toughness. “We talk toughness this week, that was our core point of the week and they showed lots of grit,” he said. “That energy that we had in the second half, we didn’t have it in the first half and that was a huge part of our win tonight.”
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