By ROY HESS, Staff Writer
It couldn’t have gotten much crazier last football season when four teams tied for the District 32-6A title.
Could something like that happen again? There’s certainly every possibility that it might.
Right now, it kind of feels like “déjà vu” all over again in 32-6A.
With three weeks left in the regular season, including this one, there are four teams tied atop the 32-6A standings with one loss apiece. They are Los Fresnos, San Benito, Brownsville Veterans Memorial and Harlingen High.
“The race has lived up to everyone’s expectations,” Los Fresnos coach Clint Finley said. “It comes as no surprise to me.
“We are currently working to improve on a weekly basis,” he added. “I am pleased with the effort of our team to this point, but we have to be more consistent on a play-to-play basis. We have to eliminate negative plays, penalties and turnovers. We have three big games ahead of us, and we need to progressively play our best games to be where we want to be.”
This week’s coming slate of games figures to clear things up, at least a little bit.
For Metro-area teams, it all starts at 7 p.m. Thursday as Harlingen High (5-2, 3-1 district) takes on Brownsville Veterans (6-1, 3-1) at Sams Memorial Stadium in a 32-6A matchup.
The 32-6A competition continues at 7:30 p.m. Friday as San Benito (5-2, 3-1) plays Lopez (1-5, 1-3) at Sams, Hanna (3-4, 1-3) is at Harlingen South (2-4, 2-2) and Rivera (0-7, 0-4) visits Los Fresnos (6-1, 3-1).
Also for Metro-area teams at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Port Isabel (4-2, 1-1) plays host to West Oso (1-6, 0-2) for a District 16-4A Division II game, St. Joseph Academy (6-1, 2-0) entertains Austin St. Michael’s (4-3, 2-0) in a TAPPS district matchup that is The Brownsville Herald’s Game of the Week and Porter (5-2, 3-1) travels to Donna High (5-2, 4-0) for a District 32-5A contest.
Another 32-5A game is on tap for 7 p.m. Saturday as Donna North (0-7, 0-4) battles Pace (1-5, 1-3) at Sams.
Going back one year, it appeared San Benito was going to claim the outright 32-6A championship as the Greyhounds were 5-0 in district and already had beaten Los Fresnos (17-14), Harlingen High (25-21) and Brownsville Veterans (67-57). But then along came the upset of the year in 32-6A as Harlingen South surprised the Greyhounds 21-20 on Halloween.
South’s upset of San Benito opened the door for all the others who were within striking distance in the standings, and then a surging Rivera team beat the Greyhounds 42-35 in a regular-season finale on Nov. 7.
The end result, including the outcomes of other 32-6A games down the stretch, was that San Benito, Harlingen High, Los Fresnos and Rivera all wound up sharing the district title with 5-2 records. Despite its 6-4 overall record, Brownsville Veterans finished on the outside looking in with a 4-3 mark in 32-6A.
Even though first-year San Benito coach Dan Gomez got the Greyhounds back in the playoffs in 2014 after a two-year absence from the postseason, he came into this season saying he and his assistants were not at all satisfied with the team’s finish last November. San Benito lost its last three games, including a 42-14 setback against Weslaco East in bi-district.
Coming into the 2015 season, Gomez, a native of Raymondville who came to San Benito after coaching at Lytle, said, “We didn’t meet expectations as a coaching staff (in 2014). It was unacceptable for what we wanted to do.”
While the Greyhounds didn’t last long in the playoffs one year ago and the Cardinals also exited early, losing to Weslaco High 3-0 in bi-district, there were strong playoff showings by Los Fresnos and Rivera as each team advanced three rounds.
Rivera captured the attention of the Rio Grande Valley last season by starting off 0-5 before winning its next seven games to reach the third round of the postseason and finishing 7-6.
This year, the teams that are front-runners for the playoffs in 32-6A are basically the same. The only difference is Brownsville Veterans, not Rivera, appears to be the one with the best chance to represent the city in the postseason.
The Chargers suffered their first loss of the season, 40-21, last week at San Benito, and are eager to get back in the win column playing Thursday at Sams against Harlingen High, which rallied to beat Los Fresnos 25-18 last week.
“We still control our own destiny for a district title, and that was our goal from the very beginning,” Brownsville Veterans coach David Cantu said. “Nothing has changed. We learned from (the San Benito) game, and we’ll do better.”
Roy Hess covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @HessRgehess.