St. Paul retakes throne

CEDAR CREEK — Shiner St. Paul’s secret weapon was hidden in plain sight all season long. But it wasn’t until the state title game when Cardinals’ head coach Jake Wachsmuth felt the need to unleash his senior running back.

Five touchdowns and over 300 all-purpose yards by T.J. Bell later, Shiner St. Paul unseated the Cedar Hill Trinity Christian Tigers to win the TAPPS Division III state football championship 43-40 and finish the season a perfect 14-0.

“[Bell] was huge,” Wachsmuth said after the game. “The last couple of weeks he kind has been a little dinged up. We don’t really say a whole lot about it but he had been and he felt better this week and that’s who he is, he’s a really good player with a lot of really good blocking for him.”

Bell averaged 11 carries per game in the previous 13 games of the season with his highest amount in a September game against Flatonia as he rushed 24 times.

The Cardinals just about dominated every game this year so trying to keep Bell fresh by the end of the state championship game wasn’t as big of a feat as it could have been, especially with backs such as Jed Janecek and Ryan Geiger as well as quarterback Austin Barton able to take some carries off of Bell.

Nonetheless, Bell took off and helped carried the Cardinals to their fifth football title in school history.

Before the game, Wachsmuth noted that to beat a high-powered offense like the Tigers, the Cardinals will have to sustain long drives with the old adage, sometimes a team’s best defense is their offense.

Friday night’s 83-point contest showed that St. Paul had to change things up a bit to take this win.

Trinity Christian’s quarterback Malachi Broadmax threw 25-of-43 for 351 yards and four touchdowns. Willie Jackson grabbed three of those touchdown passes as well as eight others for a total of 11 catches for 150 yards. Marvin White had eight catches for 161 yards and one touchdown for the Tigers.

White’s touchdown reception midway through the fourth quarter gave the Tigers a 32-31 lead as both teams traded scores and leads.

On the ensuing kickoff, Bell returned a kick for 86 yards to give St. Paul the 37-32 lead. Right after, the Tigers drove to the St. Paul 35 and on a fourth-and-2 play, Conor Kresta made a big play and tackled Tigers’ back Isaiah Davis short of the marker to force a turnover on downs. 

“Our defense had their hands full, that is a really good football team with a lot of…I can’t even tell you who all the players all because they’re everywhere,” Wachsmuth said. “Our offense has been playing better, our defense made big stops when we had to, it was just a team win.”

On St. Paul’s third play of their next drive, Bell ran to the end zone on a 55-yard play to give the Cardinals the 43-32 lead.

“I don’t even remember every play in the game I just remember it was big. I just know it was big,” Wachsmuth exclaimed.

With two minutes left in the game the Trinity Christian drove down the field on 12-plays to come within three but with not enough timeouts left and just 16 seconds on the clock remaining, the Tigers needed an onside kick recover for another offensive possession.

St. Paul’s Nathan Pilat would be the one to easily recover the kick, giving the Cardinals the ball and essentially clinching the win.

The 40-point output by the Tigers was the most the Cardinals have given up all season. Although Trinity Christian was able to retake the lead late in the game, Wachsmuth attributed his team’s scrappiness as a reason why they took it back and won the game.

“We just had to keep scrapping,” Wachsmuth explained. “I’m not going to say we did anything special, we didn’t let them do anything. We just made a lot of plays and even on that last fourth down stop we just found ways, that’s just our kids.”

Shiner St. Paul (14-0) now adds a fifth football title, their third in the last five years, to the trophy case which will sit beside their state titles in 1992, 1997, 2010 and 2012. And with their win Friday night at Bastrop Memorial Stadium, the Cardinals remain the only undefeated football team in TAPPS as the previously undefeated Dallas Bishop Dunne lost in their state final game in TAPPS Division I against Piano Prestonwood Christian.