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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Sports
Thursday, September 13, 2001
Eagles look to stop Bucks' early run
By JON FULBRIGHT
Staff Writer
The Alpine Bucks have two shutouts in two games this year and one shutout
in their game against the Pecos Eagles last year.
The Eagles just avoided a shutout in their game last week, and will try
to get both their offense and defense going Friday night, when the Eagles
travel to Alpine for their first road game of the 2001 season.
The starting time is set for 8 p.m. and will be the only game involving
a District 2-4A school on Friday. All of the games involving Pecos' district
rivals have been canceled in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New
York and Washington.
The Bucks opened up 2001 with a 27-0 win over Anthony and followed that
up last Friday by dismantling Van Horn, 48-0. Overall this season Alpine
is expected to battle for a playoff spot with Crane, Monahans and Fort Stockton,
whom the Eagles lost to last Friday by a 32-8 score.
"We feel like we're playing pretty good ball right now," said Bucks' coach
Greg Althof. "I don't know if we've really been tested, but I think that
Pecos is going to give us a good test."
Alpine returns almost all their skill position players and most of their
defense from last year's team, including quarterback D.T. Dominguez, whose
24-yard touchdown pass to Roman Rodriguez in overtime last year gave the
Bucks a 6-0 victory over the Eagles.
"They're good. They've got a great group of skill players and have a good
defense. They're averaging 400 yards a game and only giving up 56," said
Eagles' coach Gary Grubbs.
Rodriguez is also back this year and ran for one touchdown and caught
another against Anthony. Anthony Roman did the same, while George Keller
and Ian LeBlanc combined to run for 202 yards. Last week, Dominguez ran for
101 yards and passed for 255 more while scoring one TD and throwing for four
more.
"They run the option just like us and he's good at running the ball,"
said Grubbs.
"We've got five or six kids we feel can carry the ball and carry it well,"
Althof said. "I think that adds a lot to our offense to be able to use several
different ball-carriers."
This is Althof's second year as Bucks' coach, and he said the team is
running his systems better this time around. "Offense, defense or whatever,
the kids are better adapted and know what we want and know how to run it."
"They can throw the ball a lot better than Fort Stockton does and they
have better skill position players than Fort Stockton," Grubbs said. "They're
not as big as Fort Stockton up front, but they still have good size."
Defensively, Grubbs said, "They're very aggressive, and stunt a lot. (Brent)
Mata is their outside linebacker, and he's the guy they really move around
a lot. He's doing a lot on defense, but he's not all they have."
Althof agreed. "He's one of our leaders, but we've got a couple of other
good kids with good experience who are seniors."
Defensively, Pecos will be trying to cut down on their yards allowed rushing
so far in 2001. They're averaging 266.5 per game so far and allowed Fort
Stockton 361 yards, most of that up the middle.
Grubbs said he didn't plan any personnel changes on the front line, but
added, "We had better workouts this week. We're still a young football team
and have kids up there who are still learning."
On offense, the Eagles will be hoping for a better start Friday than they've
had so far in their first two games. They scored three of their four touchdowns
against Kermit in the second half and were shut out until the closing seconds
of last week's loss to Fort Stockton.
Grubbs said the Eagles should have all their players available for Friday,
including fullback Ray Parada, who had to leave last week's game after taking
a hard shot while pass blocking for quarterback Freddy Torres. "He's back
and he'll start," Grubbs said.
Torres started last years game against Alpine in an emergency situation
after being brought up from the junior varsity and struggled before being
replaced by Richard Rodriguez. So far this season, the junior has had better
success along with the rest of the offense in the second half of the Eagles'
games than in the first half, with all three of his touchdown passes so far
coming in the fourth quarter, including last week's 4-yard toss to Matthew
Levario.
Friday's game begins the first of a stretch of five road contests in their
next seven games for Pecos. Their only home games between now and the final
game of the season are homecoming on Sept. 29 against Monahans and a home
game three weeks later against pre-district favorite Fabens.
Pecos sub-varsity squads
face Alpine, Crane today
The Pecos Eagles' sub varsity teams will all be trying again for their
first wins of the season today, when they face the Alpine Bucks and Crane
Golden Cranes in afternoon and evening contests.
The only team not able to do so tonight will be the seventh grade gold
team, which was scheduled to host Crane. That game has been canceled, but
the eighth grade gold team's game with the Cranes is still scheduled, though
it may be moved up from its original 6:30 p.m. starting time at the Crockett
Middle School field.
Over at Eagle stadium, Pecos' freshman and junior varsity teams will be
facing Alpine in 5 and 7 p.m. starts, while down south, the Eagles' seventh
and eighth grade purple teams will take on the Bucks, at 4 and 5:30 p.m.
The seventh grade purple team was the only one not to lose last week,
as they tied their opener at Fort Stockton, 0-0. The eighth graders lost
their two games to the Panthers, 14-0 in the gold game at 16-2 in the purple
contest.
The JV and freshmen teams tied their season openers with Kermit and Carlsbad
but lost to the Panthers, the ninth graders by an 18-14 score at home and
the JV by a 27-14 margin at Fort Stockton.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
Division of Buckner News Alliance, Inc.
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 915-445-5475, FAX 915-445-4321
e-mail newsdesk@nwol.net
Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium.
Copyright 2001 by Pecos Enterprise
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