Three area football teams still in postseason picture

Greyhounds play Thursday, Chargers and Eagles in action Friday

All three 11-man football teams in Boerne won their first-round playoff games and advanced to the second round of the playoffs.

Boerne Champion, Boerne High and Geneva School of Boerne will continue their seasons with second-round games this week.

Boerne High plays against Mission Pioneer on Thursday in Laredo at the Bill Johnson Student Activity Center, while the Chargers face Pharr-San Juan-Alamo North on Friday at the same place. Both games start at 7 p.m.

Geneva will travel to the Temple area and play at Little River Academy to face All-Saints Episcopal – Tyler, 7 p.m.

Boerne High

The Greyhounds (101) are coming off a 42-13 win over Corpus Christi Ray, while the Pioneer Diamondbacks (7-4) doubled up Edcouch-Elsa, 42-21.

BHS head coach Brett Sawyer said the Diamondbacks prefer to keep the ball on the ground.

“We looked at five or six of their games (on film) and charted that they run about 78 percent of the time,” he said. “They’re a good team; they play hard and are well coach.”

Offensively, Sawer says they run the ball well and have a good quarterback and running back and good size up front on the line.

“They have a good scheme offensively,” he said.

Sawyer added that when there are no mutual opponents and when a team doesn’t play anybody from this area, it’s hard to get a gauge and how fast and good a team is.

“When you don’t know what the competition is like, it’s hard to tell how fast they are playing,” he said. “We look at their closest games and see what happened in those games and then we look at games where the team they are playing lines up like we do.”

Boerne is coming off a 42-13 win over the Texans last week at home (see story in today’s issue). The Greyhounds raced out to a 21-0 lead, but it was 21-13 in the second half before BHS pulled away by scoring 21 points in the fourth quarter.

In that fourth quarter, Jeff Morrison found the end zone twice, while BHS QB Grant Sweeney tossed a TD pass to Will Traylor.

“Being able to close out games in the fourth quarter is a good sign moving forward,” Sawyer said. “It’s win or go home and we won, so we’ll take it.”

It’ll be a long day on Thursday for the Greyhounds. They’ll have a six-hour round trip on a bus with a game in between and won’t return to Boerne until after midnight and then have school the next day. Sawyer said it’ll be a grind but added that was the only date available.

“Thursday was the only time we could get a stadium in Laredo,” he said. “I don’t care either way, it doesn’t matter to me, at this point you’ve taught skill so you’re focusing on the game plan.”

Boerne Champion

Champion (8-3) faces a stiff test and plays undefeated Pharr- San Juan-Alamo North (110) on Friday. Chargers head coach Blane Ellis is impressed with the Raiders’ perfect season thus far.

“Undefeated is undefeated, it’s hard to go play and be consistent from week to week and to win 11 in a row is not an easy thing to do,” he said. “They’ve found ways to win and play with a lot of swagger and a lot of confidence.”

PSJA-North is coming off a 65-14 victory last week over Mission, while the Chargers defeated Southwest last Thursday, 42-13.

Ellis said the Raiders will be a lot like the Dragons in how they scheme offensively but can throw the ball better.

“In the games we charted they are about 73 percent run and 27 percent pass, but they are more talented in the passing game (than SW) and have better wideouts,” he said. “They lost their bell-cow running back to injury, but they’ve kept winning. Their quarterback does a good job of running their offense.”

Last week’s win over the Dragons was the first playoff victory for the Chargers since 2021 and now they are looking for their first second-round win since 2019.

Ellis said a fast start would go a long way to help his team.

“If we can get up a couple of scores and tempo them on offense, that would make them uncomfortable in calling plays,” he said. “They’re good and it’ll be a challenge but we’re looking forward to it.”

Geneva School of Boerne

The Eagles (9-2) will head north and play in the Temple area against All Saints Episcopal (8-3) from Tyler Friday, 7 p.m. The game will be played at Little River Academy.

Geneva coach Bob Rosenstiel said all the teams left in the playoffs at this point are good and added that All Saints will try to be balanced offensively and are probably about 60-40 in favor of the run.

“They’re a good physical team and run the ball very well,” he said. “They’re a passing threat too. They’ll take their shots down the field; they just wait for the right opportunity to do that.”

Rosenstiel is hoping to get a few more players back from injury this week but wasn’t sure.

“I’ve got a few on the fence, but we’ll just play with the guys we’ve got,” he said. “We’ve had players step up.”

All Saints defeated Hill Country Christian School last week, 49-34, a team Geneva defeated on Oct. 12 during district play, 28-12, and Rosenstiel said that helps in their preparation.

Geneva rolled in its first-round game against an overmatched Bishop Gorman at Cornerstone last Friday, 49-12 (see story in today’s issue.)

The Eagles are looking for their first second-round playoff win since 2019 when they won state. Geneva has been knocked out of the postseason three times since in the second round with losses in 2020, 22 and 23.