The Edna Cowboys are the Regional Champions for the third straight year after defeating the Llano Yellowjackets 41-14 Friday night. It was not a perfect game for the Cowboys, but they did more than enough to get the win and move on to the state semi-finals.
The Cowboys defense came out strong to start the game, and after Angel Olivares blew up a screen pass on third down, Llano was forced to punt. The Cowboys didn’t turn that possession into points, but their defense continued to play at a high level. Another Llano drive ended after Whit Martin recovered a fumble, but Edna was again held out of the end zone, and sent their defense back out.
Mike Kunkle sacked the quarterback for a big loss, which forced a punt from deep in Llano territory, and set the Cowboys up just forty yards out. Chase Schubert hit Braylen Harris over the middle, and Harris broke a tackle and ran it in for the first score of the game. The Cowboys got another short field after Harris picked off a pass and set them up inside the forty yard line. A few plays later, Schubert ran it in from twenty yards out to put the score at 13-0 in the waning seconds of the first quarter.
The Cowboy defense came up with another big play their next time out, as Brody Psencik picked off a screen pass and took it all the way down to the Llano ten. Psencik said, “I’ve been working on defending screens all year, and I finally got them to throw it to me, I felt them let me go easy and I saw the guy behind me and it was perfectly set up for me to pick it off, I just wish I could have scored.” Psencik may not have scored, but his offense took advantage of the great field position again and scored on a fifteen yard pass from Schubert to Harris.
The Cowboys defense continued to flex their muscles as the second quarter wore on with Olivares and Mitchell making stops at the line, and Hunter Buehring getting a sack. A few penalties helped Llano get down deep inside Edna territory, but inside their own two they tightened up and made a goal line stand that featured tackles behind the line by Trevor Floyd and Tate Mitchell.
Despite some hard runs by Schubert and Ryland Slusher, the Cowboys did not put up any more points, and carried a 20 -7 lead into the half.
The theme of the first half had been the Cowboys taking the ball from Llano, and early in the third quarter, they did it again, when Miles Randle snagged an interception that set them up at the thirty yard line. Doc Cantu ran around the right side for fifteen yards before Schubert paid it off with a short touchdown run that made it 27-7. Llano got their final points of the night after driving down field, most of their yards coming from three consecutive pass interference calls, and scoring on a short run.
Late in the third, Harris played quarterback, and on back to back plays, he picked up forty yards on the ground. A pass to Buehring picked up twenty yards, and Harris finished it with a twenty yard touchdown run that put Edna up 34-14 with less than a minute in the third.
Cantu scored on the first play of a drive from the twenty five yard line that made the score 41-14, and the defense made sure that the lead was safe in the fourth quarter. Jayfus Smith, who played tight coverage all night, broke up a pass down field, and Whit Martin had a tackle for loss. Kunkle added another tackle for loss, and as the game was coming to a close, Smith dove to break up another pass deep down field. The Cowboys ran out the rest of the clock to secure the win.
With the 41-14 win over the Llano Yellowjackets, the Cowboys are once again Region Four Champions, and one game away from playing for a state championship.
Standing in their way in the semifinal is the Columbus Cardinals.
Senior Whit Martin said, “If things go right, we have two more games, so we just have to finish right and finish hard.”
About the task of facing a very talented Columbus team next week, Head Coach Jimmie Mitchell said,”We’ve got a lot of work to do this week, and we have to have some serious urgency and be locked in so we are ready to go next week.”
Edna will face Columbus on Thursday, December 12 at Rice University in Houston.
