Comfort hosts Ingram and one of them will notch first win of season

There will be good news and bad news coming out of Friday’s football game between Comfort and Ingram.

The good news is that one of the teams will pick up its first win of the season, while the bad news is that the other squad will remain winless.

Ingram (0-2) visits Comfort (0-1) Friday at Bobcat Stadium, 7 p.m.

Comfort is coming off a 46-24 loss to Dilley last week. It was Comfort’s first game of the year after their opener scheduled for Aug. 30 at Brackett was called because of lightening in the area.

There’s a theory that a football team improves weekly and the biggest improvement takes place between their first and second games.

Bobcats coach Jay Rieken said he hopes that theory proves to be true.

“Hopefully we’re on an uphill trend. I don’t know how far behind we are, but we needed to play. We saw some good things but there are things we need to work on,” he said. “We’ll make some personnel changes, more on offense than defense but we have to clean up our execution on both sides.” Dilley plays a physical brand of football and Rieken said his team didn’t match the Wolves in that department.

“They got after us really good and we didn’t respond,” he said. “That’s why I like playing them, they’re physical and make you play. We saw where we are at and we weren’t ready.”

Comfort is young and only starts one senior on offense and Rieken said the team is lacking senior leadership right now.

“We miss having those seniors but it’s what we’ve got, leadership is a big deal,” he said. “We’ll get better and see who rises to the top and who responds to the challenges we put before them.”

Comfort actually held a 17-14 lead late in the second quarter of last Friday’s game, but the Wolves finished the half with a flurry and never looked back.

Dilley scored two TDs in the final 2:23 of the first half and tallied 20 points in the second quarter for the 27-17 halftime lead.

The Wolves outscored the Cats in the second half, 19-7, to ice it.

Both teams moved the ball well and Dilley finished with 356 yards of offense, while Comfort tallied 343 yards.

Comfort only threw the ball nine times in the game and completed 5 of their passes for 78 yards and a TD.

Topper Sterling led the Comfort ground game and finished with 101 rushing yards on 26 attempts, while QB Carter Pape ran 7 times for 45 yards and a touchdown.

Gio Lopez was Comfort’s top receiver with 4 catches for 78 yards and a score.

In its two previous games, Ingram lost to Crystal City, 26-9, and fell to Bandera last week, 28-21.

Rieken said those are two solid programs, so he knows Ingram is better than their record.

“They’ve play good competition,” he said. “It’s going to be tough; they’ll be good.”

The coach said one positive from last Friday was that his players appeared to be in good shape. They have several two-way players and Rieken said they held up pretty well.

“I was concerned with game conditioning more than anything,” he said. “I thought we were in pretty decent shape.”