JOHN CANNON | Special to the Star
EDINBURG – So far, playing on Thursday nights has been good to the Harlingen South Hawks.
The Hawks, who have played all of their games on Thursday, improved to 3-0 after capturing a big 38-14 victory over Edinburg North at Cats Stadium in Edinburg.
“Thursday night lights have been good to us,” said Harlingen South head football coach Brian Ricci. “It’s great and the kids have handled it well.
“It is different playing on those specific nights, but we have been ready to go in each and every one of them and I am proud of them.”
The Cougars, however, drew first blood on the opening drive of the night as quarterback Cristian Espinoza threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Justin Guerra to give them a 7-0 lead with 7:43 left in the opening quarter.
South countered back on its first drive of the night and tied the game at thanks to a 19-yard touchdown run by quarterback Brandon Villarreal. South marched 60 yards in just four plays and took 1:12 off the clock on the scoring drive.
The Hawks pushed their lead to 10-7 at the 11:21 mark of the second quarter after Sean Muniz nailed a 27-yard field goal.
Adrian Torres helped Harlingen South push its lead to 17-7 as he ran it in from 3 yards out with 3:18 left in the second quarter. Torres had another solid game as he ran for a game-high 126 yards on 10 carries on the night.
South had a good third quarter offensively as it scored 21 points to take a commanding 38-7 lead.
Matthew Zavala scored the first touchdown of the third quarter for the Hawks on a 45-yard run that put the Hawks up 24-7.
Then the Hawks defense got involved in the scoring as Zac Fayyad picked off Espinoza and took the ball 30 yards to the house as South added seven more points to their lead at the 8:53 mark of the third.
The final score of the night for South came by way of a 7-yard touchdown run by Gilbert Montemayor with 3:55 left in the third quarter.
South now enters its bye week before starting district play against Harlingen High. Ricci said he was very pleased with what he has seen from his team so far.
“There’s three seasons we consider in this game and we just finished the first one, which is non-district play and we ended up going 3-0,” said Ricci. “We now have some momentum going into district play and it’s time to prepare for district play, which just happens to be one of the toughest ones around.
“But, so far, the kids have been playing well and I know they are going to be ready to go in our district opener.”