Shiner St. Paul looking for a perfect ending

SHINER — Before the season prognosticators including Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine declared Cedar Hill Trinity Christian (TCA-Cedar Hill) and Shiner St. Paul favorites to win state. Now both teams meet up in the TAPPS Division III finals with the Cardinals (13-0) trying to finish out their perfect season and the TCA-Cedar Hill Tigers (10-3) attempting to repeat as state champion.

“They’re the defending state champions and obviously they’ve had success,” St. Paul head coach Jake Wachsmuth noted. “Obviously, they’re a very good team, [but] I don’t think that’s going to overwhelm our kids.”

There hasn’t been much change for the Cardinals this week in terms of preparation. According to Wachsmuth, the athletes knew that they wanted to get to this point and have remained focused, taking it week by week this season.

“They wanted to get here but they want to finish,” he said, “they’re excited. Obviously it’s an exciting thing just to make to the [state] game. Their focus has been pretty good, I’ve been really pleased.”

TCA-Cedar Hill comes into tonight’s game with weapons on both sides of the ball. Leading their spread-type of offense is senior quarterback Malachi Broadnax. 

“[Broadnax] is a good thrower,” Wachsmuth said, “he likes to throw to #16 [Marvin White].”

The Tigers will also feature running backs #2 Reggie Hicks and power back #25 Isaiah Davis.

Although they average 39.5 points per game, TCA-Cedar Hill’s “calling card” as Wachsmuth describes it is their defense.

Linebacker Tavion Carter was picked in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine as the preseason defensive MVP in TAPPS Division III.

“Carter is unstoppable and makes any and every type of defensive play,” DCTF magazine reported at the time.

“They do a lot of different things [on defense],” Wachsmuth noted. “We expect to see a five-down linemen, two-linebacker look. They’re pretty aggressive on defense.”

According to MaxPreps, junior defensive end Dylan Riley leads the team with 115 tackles. Donovan Conley has 102 and Carter has 91.

The Cardinals will need to eliminate those turnovers in order to have some success against the speedy Tigers’ defense.

One of the keys to the game will be Cardinals’ quarterback Austin Barton and whether or not he can continue to take command on the offense.

“[He’s] been a great leader for us,” Wachsmuth said of his junior quarterback. “It’s not just him obviously [but] I think a lot of teams play through their quarterback. We don’t want to turn the ball over, we’d like to control the ball.”

Last season the Cardinals were able to rely on running back T.J. Bell to get things going offensively. But this season Shiner St. Paul has been fortunate to have multiple backs get in the mix this year. Last week’s win proved it as the Cardinals had three rushers gain over 100 yards.

“T.J. obviously has over the last few years run for a lot of yards, but when you look at a kid like Jed [Janecek], people would probably say he’s the backup but he looks pretty good too,” Wachsmuth said.

The St. Paul head coach also point out that having Ryan Geiger, Conor Kresta, Derek Kapavik and his quarterback Barton in the backfield has helped throughout the season and will hopefully help in tonight’s game.

The TAPPS Division III state football game is tonight at Memorial Stadium in Bastrop, with kickoff at 7:35 p.m.