The Comfort High football team had its best game of the season last Friday and it was perfect timing as the Bobcats get ready to open district play this week.
Comfort (1-3) visits Nixon- Smiley (0-4) to begin 15-3A DII action this Friday. The Bobcats are coming off a 55-15 win over Brackett for their first victory of the season and Coach Jay Rieken said it was a good game to get under their belt to kick off district play.
“It was great, but the thing is it doesn’t last long,” Rieken said. “When you’re walking off the field you’re already thinking about the next game, but it was great that my son was there and my wife was in the stands and I got to share it with them.”
Comfort had been winless heading into the Brackett game, but Rieken said he knew they had the talent to put a complete game together.
The Bobcats were up 21-0 against Ingram Moore a few weeks ago and lost, so Rieken felt it was only a matter of time.
“I figured it would come, I just had to be patient because we had come close before,” he said. ”I wasn’t self-reflecting to see if we were doing it right, we just had to stay the course, so there wasn’t any panic there.”
Last Friday’s homecoming win over Brackett was payback of sorts because in last year’s game, the Tigers beat the Bobcats 58-24, and this year, Comfort claimed the 55-15 victory.
Even Rieken admitted he didn’t expect to see his team tally 55 points.
“Their coach is a good friend and I was kind of surprised that it got out of hand, but we just wore them down,” he said. “We got our run game going. We got on some blocks and stayed on them and got to the second level and were hitting big plays.”
Topper Sterling had TD runs of 55, 67, 38 and 35 as the Bobcats rolled to 242 rushing yards. Gio Lopez also had a 2-yard TD run, while Jared Valadez and Evan Valadez both added rushing touchdowns as 7 of their 8 scores came on the ground.
Nixon-Smiley is a team that’s struggling to score points. The Mustangs enter the contest at 0-4 and haven’t recorded more than 20 points in a game. They tallied 20 against SACS and Wallis Brazos and only 8 against Three Rivers and 14 against Flatonia.
Rieken said the Mustangs like to shorten the game and will run the Slot T.
“They want to control the ball on offense and grind it out. They use a lot of misdirection,” the coach said. “They’re not scoring a whole lot of points, but they are getting better. If you look back at their first game, they’re a whole different team out there.”
Rieken said he feels great going into district play with such a convincing win.
“I wish we could have had a couple more wins, but the kids are still doing what we’re asking. They’re doing a good job of that, but we still have a long way to go,” he said. “We haven’t had a problem with the buy in, it’s the execution because we’re asking different things out of them. It’s been good, but we just need to get some kids healthy.”
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