By ROY HESS | The Brownsville Herald
BROWNSVILLE — The Mission Veterans Patriots wrapped up an undefeated District 16-5A Division I championship with Thursday’s 50-21 victory against the Brownsville Lopez Lobos at Sams Memorial Stadium.
The win allowed the Patriots to finish the regular season with a 9-1 overall record and a 9-0 mark in district.
In 17 years of Mission Veterans’ existence, it’s the first outright district title in football for the Patriots. They’ve shared a district title in football before, but never won one outright, Patriots coach David Gilpin said.
“Our eyes are on a bigger prize this year,” Gilpin said. “The district championship is nice, and we’re excited and happy about that. But we have been talking about making a (long) playoff run all year long. We have some special players (to do it).
“We’re not a big team, but we have special players and we have some really good players,” he added. “I just feel like we’re poised to do something special this year. That’s been the plan since we saw the new realignment (in early 2018). We thought things would fall into place for us. We’re right where we wanted to be, so that’s exciting.”
Mission Veterans, ranked No. 3 in the Valley, now moves on to the Class 5A Division I bi-district playoffs and will go against a team from the Corpus Christi area next week, or possibly one of the schools from Victoria.
The Patriots lost their season opener to city rival Mission High 24-12 on Aug. 31, and since then, have won nine straight games.
It was a tough way for the Lobos (2-8, 1-8) to end their season after advancing to the playoffs during each of the past two years.
It was all the Patriots from the very start as they scored on their first three possessions to build a 21-0 first-quarter advantage. They scored on five out of six possessions in the first half to increase the lead even more.
After scoring three times during the opening period, the Patriots added a pair of touchdowns in the second quarter to make it 35-0 at halftime.
Mission Veterans took a 42-7 lead into the final period.
It was another strong showing by Patriots senior quarterback Landry Gilpin, son of the team’s head coach. He rushed 19 yards around the left side to make it 7-0 early in the first quarter before running back Daniel Cantu’s 30-yard run hiked the lead to 14-0. With 33 seconds left in the opening period, Ralph Ochoa caught a 15-yard scoring pass from Gilpin for a 21-0 advantage.
In the second period, Gilpin threw a 10-yard TD pass to Mike Gonzaque and then Gilpin ran 14 yards to the end zone to make it 35-0 after Alfredo Trujillo’s fifth extra-point kick with 1:46 to go until intermission.
Gilpin finished with three TD passes and three rushing scores. During the second half, he threw a 26-yard scoring pass to John Aguilar in the third period and added a 1-yard TD run in the fourth quarter to make it 50-14 with 6:23 left.
For Lopez, Christian Gamez ran for two TDs and teammate Leo Ramos one.
Gamez, who led all rushers with 114 yards on 18 carries, scored on a 1-yard plunge in the third quarter and added a 41-yard scoring scamper in the fourth. Ramos burst into the end zone on a 3-yard run with 3:42 remaining to account for the final score of 50-21.
Mission Veterans was coming off last week’s 55-38 district win at home against La Joya Palmview. Lopez was coming off a 31-28 district loss last week at PSJA Memorial.
Prior to Thursday, the last time the two teams played each other was the 2017 bi-district playoffs when the Patriots won 25-17 in Mission.