By ANDREW CRUM | THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD
EDINBURG — Los Fresnos senior quarterback Charles Chapa has stepped up in big moments this season and he did it again against Edinburg High.
Chapa threw for a pair of touchdowns and ran for two others to lead the Falcons to a 34-14 victory over the Bobcats in a Class 6A Division I bi-district game Thursday night at Richard R. Flores Stadium.
“We came in with a lot of fire, we knew we had to perform,” he said. “It feels really good … as a senior I get at least one more week of football.”
The senior signal caller piled up 264 yards of offense — 139 yards on the ground and 125 through the air — and the defense took care of the rest with a pair of forced fumbles and a sack to help Los Fresnos (8-3) advance to the area round. Edinburg High finished the season with a 6-5 record.
“I don’t know what he does … he mesmerizes people with his crazy legs,” Los Fresnos coach Patrick Brown said. “He does such a good job with our tailback (Albert Banuelos) where he reads the defender and lulls him to sleep and then he’ll get down field and make a play. He did a great job (Thursday).”
Los Fresnos got on the board first when Chapa hit sophomore wide receiver Nico Valencia in stride on a 40-yard pass for a touchdown and a 6-0 lead (after the extra point was blocked) with 1:30 to go in the first quarter.
After the teams traded punts, the Falcons extended their lead to 13-0 with an 8-yard run by senior Adrian Alaniz with 4:40 remaining in the second. After Los Fresnos’ defense forced a fumble, the offense capitalized. Chapa did it almost all by himself with 67 yards rushing on the ensuing drive, including a 59-yard scamper. He finished it with an 8-yard scoring burst (pass failed on a two-point conversion) and the Falcons took a 19-0 edge with just 17 seconds left before halftime.
“Our defense, boy they played lights out,” Brown said. “We live and die with our defense and they gave us so many opportunities … luckily we were able to help them out this week. Edinburg High was playing its first playoff home game in 13 years and they came out fired up and they were playing hard … luckily we were able to match their intensity and there’s no question that extra score going into the half started the nail in the coffin process and gave us a lot of confidence going into halftime.”
Edinburg High had a tough first half with two turnovers on downs, three punts and a fumble that Los Fresnos turned into points.
“That was hard for us because of bread and butter plays weren’t working for us,” Edinburg High coach JJ Leija said of his team’s offensive struggles. “We’re a running team and we had to rely on the pass, we put in our second quarterback Danny Shawnee and he did well …. but these kids never stopped fighting. Defensively, we gave up some big plays in the first half, but I thought we played well.”
Chapa continued his impressive night in the second half. He found sophomore receiver Eddie Uribe on a 35-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown to give Los Fresnos a 27-0 lead with 2:45 to go in the third quarter.
Edinburg High, which struggled mightily on offense in the first half, finally got on the board with 1:04 left in the third. Junior running back Hearlin Benavides found the end zone after a 3-yard touchdown run to make it a 27-7 ballgame.
But Chapa wasn’t finished. Two plays later, on the Falcons’ next drive, he scored on a 62-yard run to give Los Fresnos a commanding 34-7 advantage with 11:46 to play.
Benavides added another touchdown run for the Bobcats with 1:27 left on the clock, but it wasn’t enough as the Falcons were too much on both sides of the ball.
Benavides finished with 83 yards and the pair of scores and quarterback Danny Shawnee had 193 yards on 10-of-21 passing for Edinburg High.
The Bobcats didn’t get going enough offensively until late in the second half and Los Fresnos had built too great of a lead by then.
“(Los Fresnos is) a talented ballclub,” Leija said. “Penalties killed us, turnovers killed us … you can’t do that against a great ball club. We told our kids all week we’ll have to play perfect football … and you can’t (make those mistakes) in the playoffs.”
Once the Falcons got going, they never took their foot off the gas. Call it a hard lesson learned last season when they had to hold off Edinburg North during a bi-district playoff game.
“Last year, we barely scrapped by Edinburg North and I think our kids and even our coaches got caught looking at records and who played who … this week we had a laser focus,” Brown said. “We used last year as an example and our kids had one of their best week’s of practice; that definitely correlates to the way we play every week.”
Andrew Crum covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6629 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter, he’s @andrewmcrum.