BY SAUL BERRIOS-THOMAS | STAFF WRITER
EDINBURG — Weslaco East didn’t find out Edinburg High senior quarterback Matt Cruz would not play until game day.
The last-minute switch was no matter for the Wildcats (3-2, 2-0), who pitched a shutout of the Bobcats (4-1, 0-1) winning 21-0 on Thursday night at Richard R. Flores Stadium.
“It doesn’t matter who is playing,” senior linebacker Freddy Cardenas said. “We can stop anybody. … I still say we are the best defense in the district.”
Not only did East’s defense dominate the line of scrimmage, but they also got the Wildcats on the board first.
Without a true quarterback on the field, EHS utilized the skilled junior Erik Cano at that position, and he played well in the role, until the big play was needed. The Bobcats got their first extended drive of the game going at the 9-minute mark of the second quarter, and they had the ball inside the East 30 on a first down. Cano dropped back to pass, but sophomore safety Hector Muniz read the play, jumped the route, and grabbed the ball.
“I saw the quarterback trying to tackle (Muniz),” Cardenas said. “So, I put a little lick on him.”
Cardenas allowed Muniz to get past the offensive line, and from there fellow safety Ramsey Vasquez, a junior, said he knew Muniz was gone.
“When he caught it, and I seen that last block, I knew he was gone,” East coach Mike Burget said. “I turned into a cheerleader on the sideline.”
“That hit made me very excited, I got up and saw (Muniz) in the end zone,” Cardenas continued. “And that is a brotherhood right there. I sacrificed myself for him, and he sacrificed himself for us.”
The play was big for a myriad of reasons.
“It was our first touchdown,” said junior running back Josh Gonzalez, who carried the ball 11 times for 34 yards. “It got us going, and it got us rolling as a team.”
It also sucked the confidence out of the Bobcats, who were desperate to get points on the board before the half. Lastly, it took the pressure off of the East offense, which was struggling to generate yardage at that point.
“There is a lot of stuff that people don’t understand, going on behind the scenes,” Burget said. “We have some guys banged up pretty bad, and I can’t risk it right now. We have some big games coming down the road. We have four more district games, and God willing, if we make the playoffs, I have to get these guys healthy for that. We need to be able to play at full strength when it counts the most.”
Once the Wildcats saw points on the board, they found the strength to shut down the game in the second half.
“Ramsey told me a kid did a knee drop on his bad ankle, so he was pretty upset about that,” Burget said. “I told him you just have to get up and run the next play.”
Vasquez took that advice and channeled the rage into yardage. Vasquez found the end zone twice in the second half, sealing the win for the Wildcats. He finished the game with 106 rushing yards to go with those two touchdowns.
“He took off in the second half,” Burget said of Vasquez. “I don’t know how many balls he ran in a row, but he was upset.”
“They were getting a lot of cheap shots in, playing dirty ball,” Vasquez said. “I’ve never seen that before. They were playing some real bad ball. I just used it as fuel, and I ran angry.”
The Monitor’s Game of the Week, which was billed as a physical matchup, did not disappoint. There were five passing attempts in the game. In the end, it was East’s victory in the physical department that allowed them to get the win on the scoreboard.
“We just played East football,” Vasquez said. “We outhit them. And they felt it; they weren’t talking in the second half.”
“We do that every game,” Cardenas added. “Weslaco East football: out hit them.”