BY SAUL BERRIOS-THOMAS | STAFF WRITER
CORPUS CHRISTI — Senior linebacker Ian Ochoa came into Friday’s regional semifinal game against Austin Westlake fighting through immense pain.
“I tore my UCL, the same injury that AJ had,” Ochoa said. “I ripped off a block, and just tore it. It was against Weslaco East in the first quarter.”
Ochoa has battled through the pain every week since.
“For my brothers, I just had to push through,” Ochoa said.
He wanted to be out there for his team, so he was going to do whatever it took to get onto the field.
Just as he fought through it, senior defensive lineman Kobe Gipson also picked up an injury that he had to gut out. He twisted his ankle in the second quarter Friday, but he went back in one play later.
“I was in lots of pain, I just had to fight through it,” Gipson said. “Until it started locking up and cramping. I couldn’t do anything at that point.”
Gipson eventually had to end his night early. In his absences, and even prior to that, Ochoa was all over the place, making tackles. Gipson was the most dominant player on the field, when he was in. He had several huge sacks, tackles for losses and tipped passes. He described going against the Westlake offensive line as “too easy.”
“I was surprised they didn’t bring more fight,” Gipson said. “They slept on us.”
The defense overall was the reason Vela had a fighting chance going into the second half.
“The whole time the defense stepped up for us, and I couldn’t ask for more from them,” senior left tackle Jayden Borjas said. “They played one of the best games of their lives, and to do it against a team like this is impressive.”
If only the defensive injuries were the only ones Vela was dealing with, they still would have had a great chance. However, the most disastrous injury of all came to the team’s most vital player.
Sophomore quarterback AJ Sotelo was dragged down to the ground on top of his shoulder in the second quarter. He stayed in for the next play, but everyone in the stadium could see the pain etched on his face through his facemask. When he got checked out on the sideline, he was told it was probably a broken collarbone, and that he could not continue.
With Sotelo out, the only quarterback who has played major time for Vela this year, senior Elijah Trujillo was not available for disciplinary reasons. That left senior Rosendo Ramirez, and freshman Chase Campbell to lead the team through the entirety of the second half.
“It was tough without AJ,” Campbell said. “We lost a lot of what we were wanting to do. Rosie can get us into plays, but he doesn’t quite have the arm strength. And then obviously, Chase is a freshman. To break him in against one of the top teams in the state was tough.”
The loss of Sotelo was too much for the SaberCats to overcome, as they fell to Austin Westlake 28-0 in the Class 6A-DII Regional Semifinals on Friday at Buccaneer Stadium.
Everyone on the team will tell you the mentality needs to be ‘next man up,’ but the reality of the situation is, when you work so hard on the game plan throughout the week, there is very little time to make sure the backups are ready.
“(Sotelo’s injury) brought the whole team down, because we didn’t run any twos,” senior running back Christian Flores said. “We were working with AJ all week. We thought we could pass protect and give him enough time.”
Flores felt helpless watching from the sidelines.
“The play that he got hurt, I wasn’t in, I should have been in, I would have protected him,” Flores said. “He fell on his shoulder, he was in for another play, but after that he was done.”
No one from Westlake will feel too bad for the SaberCats though, as they came in without their 1,000-yard rusher Tripp Graham, who was hurt last week in the area round. The Chaparrals also lost their senior quarterback Taylor Anderson just before the half. He did not return.
Anderson was dominant, as advertised, before the injury. His first touchdown was a 39-yard pass to senior receiver Mason Magnum. He then gave Westlake a 14-0 halftime lead with a 41-yard run into the end zone.
Just before halftime, both quarterbacks came off with their respective injuries.
In the second half, the Vela defense was the star again, limiting the Westlake offense.
Just before the end of the third quarter, Westlake was looking for their third score, and Vela’s defense was doing everything it could to prevent it.
On fourth-and-one, Westlake could not get into the end zone, but the Chaparrals were able to gain enough yards to earn a fresh set of downs at the 1. Vela used two timeouts during the goal-line stand, and Westlake used one. Vela held strong on a first-down run, and then again on a second-down run, but on third down, Westlake junior quarterback Drew Willoughby found the speediest man on the field, Mangum, for another Westlake touchdown.
“I think that is a little snapshot of the entire game,” Campbell said. “We were fighting on that goal line stand. We were stopping their run. We had the throwback covered, we were just a step behind. But I think that is a snapshot of what ended up happening.”
The Chaparrals tacked on their fourth score in the fourth quarter to seal the game.
“Our main battle cry was we felt we were embarrassed last year. We felt like we didn’t put a good product on the field,” Campbell said. “We wanted to come out here and be competitive, we truly felt like we could put ourselves in a position to go toe-to-toe with these guys. We did that tonight.”
“We have been waiting for this game all year,” senior running back Aaron Alvarez said. “It felt great to come out here and give it our all. We played a good caliber team, and we did our best.”
Ochoa fought through tears to describe what the SaberCats mean to him, and why he played through the screaming of agony inside his body: “My family, they are my family. They will always be my family.”
After the game, the first person Ochoa wanted to see was senior safety-turned-receiver Daniel Enriquez.
“Ian that guy is tough. He fights through all his pain,” Enriquez said. “Sometimes, he won’t even tell the trainers about his injuries. He’s a ball player. I really love that guy, because he is like a brother to me. He played his heart out.”
It is one thing for a player who has been there for four years to do that, but what about the guy who joined the team this year?
“I think those two are just representative of the fight in the whole team,” Campbell said of Ochoa and Gipson. “At this time of year, there is not a Texas high school football team that is not fighting injuries. The fact that they stuck with it, those guys are tough. The whole football team is full of tough kids.”