By ANDREW CRUM, Staff Writer
It was just one of those nights for the Cowboys.
Porter had three turnovers that led to 28 points for Donna High in the first quarter and the Redskins ran away from the Cowboys 56-21 in District 32-5A action Thursday night at Sams Memorial Stadium.
“It’s like déjà vu all over again, we’ve had the same issues the last three games,” Porter coach Tom Campos said. “Anytime you fumble inside the 20 and give it back to them, its rough. Then we have back-to-back possessions with a pick, they had 21 points on the board before we had run five plays. We dug a pretty big hole that we couldn’t get out of.”
The Cowboys fumbled the opening kickoff and quarterback Frank Alvarado on consecutive drives was intercepted twice by the Donna High defense in the opening quarter. The Redskins’ offense took advantage scoring on touchdown runs of 1, 10, 3 and 5 yards; two by quarterback Edward Dougherty.
“(The opening kickoff fumble) that was big,” Donna High coach Ramiro Leal said about the unexpected momentum shift. “It’s our consistency (that has improved), the offensive line has now been the same for three or four games, so its cohesiveness, we’re starting to jell.”
Porter shook off the rough first quarter and finally got on the board in the second quarter. David Pacheco nailed a 37-yard field goal and later George Gutierrez capped off another Porter drive with a 1-yard touchdown run just before the half.
Dougherty added another touchdown in the second quarter, this one through the air, finding Kristian Montemayor on a 10-yard strike. Donna High gashed the Porter defense for 252 yards on the ground and four touchdowns in the first half.
“We gave them 35 points, that’s too much in the first half,” Campos said. “We gave them three extra opportunities in the first half and that led to points.”
The Redskins added three more rushing touchdowns in the second half. Paul Guerra scored on a 9-yard run, Dougherty had a 1-yard score and Edson Alvarado added a 1-yard run for another Donna score.
“The more games (Dougherty) plays, the better he gets. The more experience he gets, he’s just getting better and better,” Leal said. “I think the sky’s the limit for him. I think his worst enemy is himself, he’s a competitor, he gets really upset. And he’s a perfectionist, so sometimes he’s too hard on himself and he needs to take it easy. He lets a mistake really get to him (at times.”)
Dougherty completed 2 of 6 passes for 30 yards and a touchdown and ran for 118 yards on 14 carries and three scores. Mike Tamez added 146 yards and two more touchdowns for the Redskins.
The Cowboys added a pair of touchdowns in the second half. Gutierrez scored on a 40-yard blast for a touchdown and Pacheco hit Juan Lopez on a 16-yard strike for another score, but it wasn’t enough.
Gutierrez finished with 197 yards on 20 carries and scored two touchdowns for the Cowboys.
Even after jumping to an early 35-point advantage, Leal was impressed the way his team played the rest of the game.
“I think it really means a lot,” he said. “There have been times where we have a letdown, we sometimes get down on ourselves. But I think we’re finally maturing as a team.”
Campos was left to wonder why the Cowboys offense continued to stall and lack proper execution.
“The kids know what we can do. We create our own mistakes and we should be able to fix them,” he said. “When we do things great, we execute our offense, it looks great. We’re not going to throw a whole lot. When we can run it, we run it and we showed against a great defense today.
“We just haven’t played our type of football the last four weeks. If we do, we’re in the game.”
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.