Nov. 9, 2009
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Play To Win
By Mikel R. Virdell…recording the history of the Fighting Llano Yellowjackets since 1973.
Proud does not describe how I feel about this Llano football team of 2009. A team that was given opportunity after opportunity to call it a night. This Jacket team refused to have their season end with any regrets. This 2009 team, and specifically these seniors can hold their heads high, for they played their hearts out, and gosh darnit, it paid off with a victory over the Liberty Hill Panthers. Sometimes hard work is not enough. Hard work and refusing to quit will be the badge that this team will have earned until the end of time.
Football (Sports) does not build character. It reveals it.
Liberty Hill and the Austin American Statesman were so sure that they were going to win, that the newspaper wrote their article before the game was played. Thank goodness Llano and Llano Coaches forgot to get the memo. The Yellowjackets opened the game with a recovery on the opening kick-off, followed with a 6 play drive and a touchdown run by senior Estevan Aviles. His run-in of the two point extra point made it 8-0 with 9:21 left in the first quarter. The Jacket defense then forced a fumble and big Josh Gammill came away with the football. The Jackets after 6 plays followed with an Estevan 24 yard field goal and an 11-0 lead. Llano was cruising. Or so I thought.
The sleeping giant awoke, and this time it was not the Canyon Lake Hawks. This time it was the team that this decade has gone to the state play-offs 7 times, won the state championship twice, and had a 38 game winning streak. And while injuries took its toll with the Panthers this year, just two weeks ago they took the the Co-District Champs to the wood shed and soundly beat Wimberley. Their talent level may have gone down some, but Liberty Hill is still a very good football team. Most still impressive is the running back of one Ryan Fickel who has been a starter on his team for three years and lead the 2007 State Championship run. He has rushed for several thousands of yards in three seasons, and is considered one of the top running backs in Central Texas. He did not let up against Llano Friday night, has he carried the football 19 times for 205 yards.
Liberty Hill came right back and drove 7 plays and 67 yards and scored to make the score 11-6. Very good defensive plays by senior Clayton Maples and juniors Sterling Jameson and Raven Herron could not stop the Panthers. The quarter ended with Llano’s junior quarterback Preston Rabb completing a 15 yard pass on 3rd down and 9 for a first down. But a few plays later into the second quarter, an interception put the ball back into the hands of Fickel & Comp., and 13 plays later, the Panthers took the lead. Seniors Cody Allen, Gammill, and senior linebacker Kayden Gass seemed to make most of the stops. At one point in the vintage Panther drive, Aviles made three unassisted tackles as the Panthers broke scrimmage. But with 4:52 in the half, the Panthers took a 12-11 lead that had ugly written all over it. My mind was thinking bad thoughts. Surely Llano was not going to blow a nice lead and then would come the onslaught of scoring touchdowns that would deflate and embarrass my 2009 team? This team did not deserve that fate! But I had the faith. I knew many of these seniors, and I knew they still had a half of a game of good football left in them. I knew for sure, they would play their best football against the Panthers in the second half.
This game of football is so odd. The third quarter, if you could see my stat sheet, would at a glance tell you that Llano dominated the 3rd quarter. Llano took the kick-off, drove 7 plays before throwing its’ second interception of the night. Panthers had the ball on Llano’s 27 yardline, and what may go down as one of the greatest plays I have ever watched took place as if in slow motion.
Fickel broke the line of scrimmage right up the middle and was on his way to the races. Slowly Estevan and Clayton emerged in pursuit, but the speed of Fickel was unmatched…I thought. Out of no where, junior Justin Saverance passed all pursuers, and within moments of Fickel crossing the goalline, Justin knew he could not stop Fickel from scoring if he just tried to pull him down from behind. And with whatever football sense he mustered in those mini-micro-seconds, Justin took his right hand and swung and hit the football from behind and it flew out of Fickel’s grasp and out of the end zone! Both sides of the grandstands went silent in a moment and a flash. A thousand people had their mouths open and taking a second to think and realize what set of events had just been reversed. Saverances’ play is one I shall never forget, and one of the most startling plays I have ever witnessed.
Llano’s football! Llano’s football! I do not know for sure, but I bet that is what Art Duluge was shouting on the radio. What a football play. What a turn of events. The Jackets were alive, and still in the game. Remember that stat sheet? The Jackets jumped to the line of scrimmage as the refs put the football down at the 20 yardline, Llano’s football. Now it was vintage Llano. 18 yards by senior Clayton Tumlinson (Maybe the best second team sub in the district) and a first down. 4 more by Maples. 5 more by Tumlinson on two carries. Estevan for 3 more. Third down and 8. Rabb to Jameson for 17 yards and a first down. 3 more by Tumlinson. 4 carries by Maples for 24 more yards and two more first downs. Rabb ran for two more down to the two yardline. It took Maples two tries, but he was in for the touchdown. What a determined drive. What a will to win. What concentration by the offensive line. And what will to keep up the effort, as Llano went for 2 points, and Maples again delivered. Llano 19, Liberty Hill 12. And we still had to play the fourth quarter!
LLlano had the ball 23 plays in the 3rd quarter. Liberty Hill had the ball 4 plays. Llano had 120 yards of total offense. The Panthers 23. But the fourth quarter was different. Liberty Hill took the ball on their 39 yardline, and marched…and marched…and marched. Two times it was fourth down. Two times the Panthers were successful against hard fought and determined play by both teams. Gass, Gammill, junior Davis Hill, junior Jordan Cavness, junior Lane Sprey, junior Travis Lawrence, and senior Charlie Durham gave way in small yards, and still the Panthers kept coming. On the 15th play of the drive, and facing 4th down and one on the 5 yardline, the Jacket defense held. I do not know how they did . It appeared that the Panthers sent every player they had into the Jacket line. The ref brought out the chains. Llano held by mere inches. Senior Russell Weihs and junior Michael Rusche and Saverance and Gass. The defense held, the ball went over to Llano, but more pressure was still to come.
Being on the five yard line, the Jackets could take no chances, and punted out of the end zone after only three plays. Here came the Panthers. But on third down the Panther quarterback threw just a finger tip too high, and no one else but Clayton Maples was there to bring the ball out to the Jacket 41 yard line with the interception. Maples had put his Jackets into a position to “hold on”. But the Jackets were more ready to finish this game than sit back and run the clock out…. Again, Tumlinson on first down goes 39 yards up the middle for a back breaking run. Maples followed with a four yard run and then a 15 yard TD run and Llano had 26 with the Aviles extra point. And when you thought this was enough drama, back came Liberty Hill with a 32 yard run on their first play after the kick-off, when a hustling Cody Allen made the tackle. But two plays later, Aviles got an interception, and sealed the game. Vintage Llano winning against the giant…a story told many times over the past 37 years.
Our 2009 seniors will relive this game hundreds of times over their lifetimes. Seniors such as Forrest Hoerster who played practically every offensive play his senior year, while his fellow lineman were dropping off week after week never gave up….never quit…never gave in to the easy way out. Their efforts and gile will remain a memory that nothing will erase.
I hope to write again by the end of this week, with updates on stats, and more comments on this very unusal 2009 season. I loved it and I hated it. But is was very special. The seniors of 2009 will replay it a thousand times. That is what this game is all about