KERRY BARBOZA Sports Editor
As the final week of the regular season approaches this Friday, some football teams are playing for district titles or trying to move up the district standings for better seeding, but that’s not the case for Comfort.
The Bobcat football team enters the final week of the Texas high school football season as the No. 3 seed in 15-3A II.
Comfort hosts South San West Campus and it doesn’t matter what happens in Friday’s game at Bobcat Stadium – win or lose – Comfort is the No. 3 seed.
Kickoff is set for Friday night in Comfort, 7:30 p.m.
“We’re locked into third no matter what happens,” Comfort coach Jay Rieken said. “Last week we had a chance to be 1, 2 or 3 but we had to win.”
The Bobcats had to defeat Poth last week but the No. 6 state-ranked Pirates are tough be beat and won the game, 43-7. They’re going to win this year’s district title and are 5-0 in 15-3A II and 8-1 overall.
Poth played in the state finals last year and got beat but return a lot of firepower. Rieken predicts another deep run for the Pirates and said they should be playing football into December.
The tide turned quickly in last week’s game at Poth. The Pirates were up 23-0 by the end of the first quarter and they held a 30-0 halftime lead.
Poth tacked on two more third-quarter touchdowns for 13 more points to open up a 43-0 lead by the time the fourth quarter rolled around.
Comfort went down swinging and scored late in the game after Mason West galloped 22 yards into the end zone for a touchdown to erase the shutout. The Julio Lopez-Torres kick was good to account for Comfort’s 7 points.
West Campus is a struggling program and is 0-5 in district. The Cougars are 2-7 overall and defeated Austin Achieve (2218) and St. Anthony (48-0) in non-district.
Rieken said they won’t overlook West Campus and was impressed with how balanced they are.
“They have a good scheme, they’re 50-50 run and pass,” he said. “They’re pretty balanced and if you give a kid a crease somewhere he’s going to take it.”
The Bobcats should be heavy favorites going into Friday’s game, but Rieken said that doesn’t matter.
“We’re not changing anything, we’re treating it as another week,” he said. “We did cut the practice schedule by 20 minutes (Monday) so they can go watch our volleyball team play.”
The Deer volleyball squad hosted Clyde Monday in a first-round playoff match.
Rieken said they are still getting players back from injury and want to get them reps but also want to be smart about it.
“We’re getting healthy and don’t want to get reinjured, but they need touches,” he said. “We’ll put those guys in and rest some starters and get everybody playing time.”
In the district, Poth is first at 5-0, Dilley second at 5-1 (Dilley has played all 10 games and are on bye this week), Comfort is 3-2 and in third, while Nixon-Smiley and Natalia are tied for fourth at 2-3 and play this Friday in a winner-take-all game for the final playoff spot.
Comfort beat Natalia and Nixon-Smiley so the Bobcats have the tiebreaker over those two teams.
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