Apaches clinch playoff berth after senior night shut out over Robstown

GONZALES — Senior night is usually a time of celebration for the athletes who will play their final game at Apache Field. As the seniors walked across the field at the end of the night for their last 100-yard march, the entire team had even more to celebrate after their dominating performance over Robstown clinched a playoff berth.

“It was good, our kids played really hard, they got after it,” Gonzales head coach Kodi Crane said. “But staying that, we still have a lot of room for improvement. We did some things that we’ve got to get better at and we’re going to see that on film. There [are] plenty ways to improve on this.”

The Apaches pitched their first shut out of the season, beating the Robstown Cottonpickers 55-0 in a total team effort.

Despite a slow start, with Alyas Ramirez fumbling on the Apaches’ first drive, Zach Akers would force an interception, giving the ball to the offense on Robstown’s 5-yard line. Ramirez punched it in on two tries for a score to give them the early 7-0 lead.

On the ensuing kick, Robstown ran a trick play which involved confusing the coverage team by giving the ball to another ball carrier. The Pickers got to the Apaches’ 13-yard line but could only go backwards due to an intentional grounding call on third down. Gonzales forced a “four-and-out” when quarterback José Molina threw an incomplete pass.

That would be the closest the Cottonpickers got to scoring a touchdown all night.

“That felt really good for our kids,” Crane said of the shut out. “It was important to them, whenever they returned that kick they went down there and made a heck of stop. We brought out new pressures that we hadn’t had so far and made a stop.”

Crane mentioned that once they reached the half allowing no points, the kids began to clamor about pitching the shut out. After reaching the fourth quarter without giving up a score, the Apaches wanted to finish the game with the number zero on the visitor’s scoreboard.

“Whenever you hang half a hundred on them and you hold them to zero it’s a pretty good thing,” he said.

Due to it being senior night as well as being up by so much, the Apaches had couple of different looks on both sides of the field, including getting some playing time for those on the bench.

“We have a lot of seniors that have shown a lot of dedication,” Crane said. “No matter if they started or no matter when they played or how many reps we just wanted to make sure those guys know how appreciative we are of what they’ve done for their time here.”

One player that got in the end zone was junior running back Josh Calvin.

Calvin hadn’t had a carry since the win over Pleasanton when he had four rushes for 11 yards. In total, the junior back had 13 rushes for 81 yards.

Friday night he rushed eight times for 41 yards, including a nine-yard touchdown late in the game as well as a long 25-yard run.

“He was extremely excited,” Crane said of Calvin’s performance. “We put [Calvin] in some punt return tonight, we put him in running back quite a bit through the second half, he even played some corner this week. He had a good football game and did some really good things.”

Meanwhile, Ramirez continued to add to his school record as he carried the ball 14 times for 156 yards and three scores. Quarterback Tyler Hendershot also had three touchdowns on the ground, carrying the ball 15 times for 81 yards. Aaron Hunt got in the end zone as well, running three times for 34 yards and a score.

The Apaches even dominated on special teams, especially after that first kickoff gaffe.

Crane opted to test his short-kicking game to keep Robstown off balanced.

“The first [short kick] was intentional,” Crane admitted. “We practiced a play that we called sand wedge, we noticed that that guy is leaving and so we kick it and whenever he leaves try to catch the thing and it worked out really good.”

The Apaches next kickoff was another short one that got caught up in the wind and came back with the team recovering it.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” Crane explained, “we tried to kick it [like that] this year several times and don’t get it for whatever reason, but if you kick it high and solid into the wind and it goes up, that thing actually starts coming back and it’s so hard for those guys to field it hits the ground and comes back to you.”

Despite all these successes on all phases of the game, Crane knows that Friday night is not the highlight of the season.

“We got to continue to get better for us to be where we want to be at the end of the season….we want to peak whenever we start district and we want to peak whenever we hit the playoffs,” he said. “To do it we’re going to have to learn from this game, the good the bad, I mean we missed plenty of blocks, we missed assignments on defense, we were lined up wrong a handful of times and those things have to be fixed.”

With this win, the Apaches are in the playoffs yet again as they moved to 3-1 in district. Gonzales will travel to Beeville to take on the Beeville Jones Trojans (2-2) in hopes of clinching the second seed Friday night.