Apaches offensive line pushes team to 39-26 win

BEEVILLE — The task at hand was simple for the Gonzales Apaches. Win and you’re the two seed. Lose? Well things get a little mucky in terms of determining playoff seeding.

After Friday night’s game against the Beeville A.C. Jones Trojans, the playoff picture has been cleared up, with an Apache 39-26 district finale win.

The biggest key to winning the game was locking down the Trojans’ junior outside receivers in Waydale Jones and Demontario Anderson.

“Those two outside receivers are dynamic, [Jones] and [Anderson],” Apaches’ head coach Kodi Crane said. “[Jones] is 6 feet, 3 inches, really good football player. We did some different things defensively but we knew it was going to boil down to making some plays whenever they chunked it up to him and I thought both of our corners did an outstanding job with that.”

Although Jones still had a productive night, catching 10 balls for 134 yards and three scores, the Trojans offense as a whole struggled against the Apaches secondary. Anderson was held without a catch.

Apaches’ cornerbacks Aaron Hunt and Alex Ortiz was troubled for the Trojans as they seemingly “climbed the ladder a couple of times,” as Crane described it, to bat down those tosses from quarterback #12 Justin Gomez.

Gomez would go 14-43 for 176 yards, one interception and three touchdowns.

Another factor that played in the Trojans’ struggles on offense was their pre-snap penalties. Beeville has a few false start calls that forced them into long downs whereas the Apaches were relatively clean.

“That’s what we’ve been talking about,” Crane said of the penalties. “…The pre-snap and post-snap penalty, we got to eliminate them and our kids did a pretty good job of that.”

On offense, Gonzales quarterback Tyler Hendershot was able to hit his targets for short gains, throwing 9-of-13 for 89 yards, all in the first half. Hendershot’s main threat was on the ground, however, has he rushed for 125 yards with three touchdowns.

Alyas Ramirez added to his rushing record, running 26 times for 222 yards and two touchdowns, including a long 75-yard rush where he broke multiple tackles to get to the end zone.

“I think our offensive line did a great job, controlling the tempo and our backs did a good job of running hard,” Crane said. “Alyas ran hard, Josh Calvin ran hard, we got to them with some different looks back there and our kids executed it as well.”

Calvin had three rushes for 32 yards and a score including a first-half 18-yard touchdown run.

A sour spot for the Apaches was their kicking game, as the team made just one of their five extra point kicks, though a two-point conversion was made in the midway through the third with a Ramirez throw to Wade Miller.

“They are extremely sound,” Crane explained. “We talked about that. They knew where they were going to attack and they came off the edge and that kid was fast coming off the edge and sold out and they had a lot of success with [blocking extra points].”

Ramirez’s extra-point throw wasn’t his only toss of the night.

On fourth-and-2 on Beeville’s 47, Ramirez lined up in the back as the rugby-style punter. Instead of kicking it, Ramirez threw the ball to a wide-open Zack Akers for a 24-yard gain for the first down, showing off their versatility.

After the win, Crane said his team was playing well, though they haven’t peaked just yet.

“I think we’re in position to [peak],” Crane said. “We had a lot of kids make a lot of plays and I’m very proud of them. We have the ability to go peak, we got to clean up some mistakes that we made. Those mistakes were obvious, we got to go clean it up, and once we do we got to have the opportunity to be playing our best football.”

The Apaches (4-6, 4-1) clinch the second seed out of District 15-4ADI. They take on the Grulla Gators out of Rio Grande City this Friday night at Flour Bluff High in Corpus Christi at 7 p.m.