A few early turnovers kept Lampasas High School in the ball game early against Wimberley High School last week, but with a steady demeanor and the help of a homecoming crowd, the Texans stayed the course to cruise to victory 41-20.
The Texans (4-0) fumbled their first possession of the Sept. 22 game, giving the Badgers (3-1) the ball essentially in the Red Zone, but the Texan defense was able to hold. Not only did they force the field goal, but the field goal was missed. Wimberley quickly took the ball down the field and scored on a 21-yard touchdown pass from Cody Stover to Nolan Waida with just under three minutes remaining in the first quarter.
The turnover bug would come back once again to bite the Texans. This time, Ty Thames picked up a fumble for Wimberley, but the Texans gave it right back with Stoever’s only interception of the ball game and only his second interception of the year. An 82-yard touchdown pass from Lampasas’ quarterback Reed Jerome to wide receiver Ty Johnson tied the ball game up at 7-7.
With 55 seconds left to go in the first half, Wimberley responded with a fiveyard touchdown run by Stoever, who accounted for six touchdowns on the game, four passing and two rushing. The Texans led 14-7 at half time.
“We had two turnovers in the first half that really took away some opportunities for us to put some points on the board,” Wimberley Head Coach Dough Warren said. “Going into halftime, we’re up 14-7, and we’re able to talk to the kids about a couple minor little adjustments and really just executing at a higher level than what we had in the first half. We did that early on, and we were able to get control of it early in the second half.”
Even though there were difficult moments, Warren didn’t feel like it mounted to enough of an issue to describe it as adversity for a team that hasn’t faced much this season.
“Adversity has different things for different people, and us being up by only seven at half… I don’t know if that’s really adversity, to be honest with you,” Warren said. “I mean, that’s closer than some of our other games have been, and so I guess some people are looking at that score-wise. But these kids, they’ve been in a lot of tough situations. They’ve been in a lot of tight ball games in the last couple of years. So things like that don’t bother them too much. They don’t panic, and that’s a good thing. They just realize what we have to do to get where we want to go or need to go. Then, they just kind of get back at it and execute the game plan at a different level.”
It didn’t take long for Wimberley to drive down the field and score with 10:20 left in the third quarter on a 24-yard run by Stoever from his second rushing touchdown of the game. This is when the Texans began to put the game away.
Lampasas turned the ball over on downs, and Wimberley quickly scored again with 5:26 remaining in the third quarter on a six-yard pass from Stoever to Noah Birdsong. Lampasas attempted to stay in the game with a quick score of their own, but Stoever led Wimberley right back down the field with a four-yard touchdown pass to Thames to make the score 34-14.
Birdsong would go on to catch his second touchdown of the game in the fourth quarter before a late touchdown and missed extra point by Lampasas gave the game the final score of 4120.
Steover would finish the game 21 for 27 passing for 216 yards, four touchdowns and one interception to go along with 168 yards rushing and two more touchdowns on the ground. He spread the ball around to eight different receivers. Birdsong led the way with seven receptions for 84 yards and two touchdowns followed by Waida’s three receptions for 62 yards and a touchdown. Owen Oneal rushed 10 times for 66 yards, and Colton Schmidt rushed 6 times for 53 yards.
Wimberley is off next week before heading to Jarrell on Oct. 6 to start district play.
