By MARK MOLINA
Staff Writer
HARLINGEN — Harlingen’s Keaton Omick is a football guy plain and simple.
He’s a player who has played team-organized football since he was six years old and has done so around the state.
Omick, who was formerly from McKinney, Texas before he moved to the Rio Grande Valley as a fifth grader, likes to think of it as a “life commitment.”
The Cardinal senior has played several positions on the football field since his arrival seven years ago.
While it probably hasn’t been ideal for him, he does it unselfishly. It’s that unselfish characteristic that makes him a team player, a third-year varsity player and it’s a bigger reason he is one of coach Manny Gomez’s go-to players.
“It’s all about the heart and passion you bring to the game. I used to play middle linebacker in middle school and I switched over to tight end and middle linebacker my sophomore year,” Omick said. “I’ve enjoyed it. It’s not my choice, but whatever I can do to help the team.”
For Omick, the positions don’t matter on the field; he’s a simple player.
In fact, the only position that he finds important is the one his team and coaches have assigned to him: being a team captain.
Despite the major responsibility, it’s something Omick enjoys.
“Being a team captain, it doesn’t really matter what position I am. I just have to be able to keep everyone on their toes and make sure they’re making the right decisions, lining up right, running the right routes or blocking,” Omick said. “It’s just a position. I enjoy being on the field doing what I love best.”
While Omick has taken a liking to being a field general of sorts, he has also been trying to keep the Cardinals focused any way he can.
With the season starting on somewhat of a sour note due to a shutout week two loss and an injury to their starting quarterback Bowie Davis, Omick just wants to stay on track despite what hurdles are coming the Cardinals’ way.
“We’re taking things one game at a time. We lost our starting quarterback in the first game—it’s adversity,” Omick explained. “Coach (Manny) Gomez always talks about adversity andhow it’s going to strike when we lest expect it, but it’s our duty to adapt and refocus. We’re just taking it one week at a time.”
Like most coaches, Omick admits to not looking beyond this Friday’s game with McAllen.
The maturity to take the game as is it comes is what Gomez has come to appreciate form Omick.
From the start Gomez has preached adversity and now he’s glad to know it hasn’t fallen on deaf ears.
“He’s obviously been paying much attention to the process of this program from start to finish. Any time we start something we need to finish it at a high level,” Gomez said. “He’s a kid who knows what commitment is. He does it right at home, in school and on the football field. Adversity won’t just happen on the field, it’ll happen in the game of life and that’s the big picture of the things we emphasize here in Harlingen. It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react”
For now, the McAllen Bulldogs are the only hurdle that matters as far as Omick and the Cards are concerned.