Champions Sun - Sports
Cy Creek, a surprise atop the standings
The Cy Creek High football team is having a storybook season.
Last season, the Cougars finished 2-8, 0-7 in district play. The rap on Cy Creek was that they were strong offensively but not as tough defensively.
Now, the Cougars (3-1, 3-0) have put it all together and sit alone atop the Class 5A-District 15 standings after consecutive upsets of defending district champion Cy Ridge (3-2, 2-1) and talented upstart Cy Woods (2-2, 1-2).
“We talk about being in the moment, you can’t worry about going 7-0 or 8-0,” Cougars coach Greg McCaig said. “Our kids are doing a great job buying into that philosophy, and you see it.”
Senior quarterback Austin Pugliese, one of the area’s most underrated signal-callers, finished with 413 total yards and five touchdowns in the Cougars’ 54-25 Homecoming victory over Cy Woods last Friday at the Berry Center.
“First off, the O-line came out and they really had great push,” Pugliese said. “They really stepped up and came through with the blocks. Yes, we were confident, but we don’t get cocky. We just want to be 1-0 at the end of the week.”
Cy Creek outscored the Wildcats, 33-6 in the second half, but McCaig and Wildcats coach David Jones agreed that Cy Woods senior quarterback Lucas Devilliers’ third quarter knee injury played a big part of the outcome.
Devilliers returned in the fourth quarter with the Wildcats down, 42-25, only to throw two interceptions on as many passing attempts.
Jones said Devilliers, who has 10 touchdowns and three interceptions through four games, is “very questionable” for Friday’s game against Cy Springs (3-2, 2-1) at the Berry Center.
I think the game would have been extremely competitive had Devilliers stayed healthy, but I still think the Cougars would have come away victorious.
Pugliese was finding open receivers all over the place and cutting through the defensive pressure with no problems.
And Cy Creek, which led 21-19 at halftime, now has a much-improved defense.
The Cougars last won a district championship in 2005, when they shared it with Cy-Fair, a team they’ll face a 6 p.m. Saturday at Ken Pridgeon Stadium.
The Bobcats are 0-5, 0-3, but if this season’s District 15 results are any indication, expect the unexpected.
--Many sports movies follow the same clichéd formulas, but The Express, the true story of the late Ernie Davis, was both inspiring and entertaining.
Davis, a standout running back for Syracuse University from 1958 to 1961, became the first African-American athlete to win the Heisman Trophy, awarded annually to college football’s top player.
The film focused largely on the challenges that Davis faced, on and off the field, during his sophomore year when he led Syracuse to its first-ever national championship.
I took away two important lessons from the film:
-We need to learn from the intolerance and bigotry of the past and be thankful that we have made strides to become a more tolerant society. But we still need to stand up against injustice whenever we encounter it.
-Secondly, never to take anything for granted in life or in sports. Davis was primed for a successful career with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, but was diagnosed with leukemia at age 22. He died a year later in May 1963.
Despite the fact that he never played a down in the NFL, the Browns retired his No. 45 jersey; I think that speaks volumes about his character.
--When I first moved to Texas, I thought it was ridiculous that four teams per district qualified for the postseason. After watching four weekends worth of Lone Star prep football, I’ve changed my tune.
The games are so competitive, and the talent in both Class 5A-District 13 and Class 5A-District 15 are so strong from top to bottom, that I think it’s definitely a good idea to allow four teams into the postseason.
I think it’s great that Texas has full-state playoffs. California determines its state champions through a bowl where teams are selected by a California Interscholastic Federation committee.
The Bowl Championship Series is bad enough, we don’t need its format to trickle down to the high school level, where politics are allowed to trump on-the-field performances.
--Watching football games at the Berry Center is amazing for any media member or fan. Ken Pridgeon Stadium and Klein Memorial Stadium are also impressive and considerably larger than high school stadiums in other states.
But there’s one thing that’s seems very different to me. A big part of high school football is homefield advantage, and none of the Cy-Fair ISD schools have it when it comes to district play. All of the games are essentially, neutral site contests, even though one squad is always designated as the home team.
I suppose that playing in such an excellent venue as the Berry Center makes up for losing the whole atmosphere of homefield advantage.
-- I spoke with University of Houston offensive lineman Michael Bloesch after the Cougars’ 45-20 victory over UAB on Thursday. Houston plays at SMU on Saturday, and I asked Bloesch, a 2004 Klein Collins graduate, if the game meant more to him because Houston and SMU were rivals in the Southwest Conference. It didn’t occur to me that Bloesch, now a 22-year-old fifth-year college senior, was just 9 when the conference dissolved in 1995 and four members went into the Big 12.
I think instead of converging with the Big 8, the Southwest Conference should have kept the line-up of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, Houston, Rice, SMU and TCU and invited LSU, Oklahoma, North Texas and UTEP. The former two would have added to the competitiveness of the conference, and the latter two would have allowed every Division I-A school in Texas to be in the same conference.
Arkansas, which left the conference for the SEC in the early 1990’s, would not receive an invitation back into it under this scenario.
The six-team divisions would be split up between north (Texas Tech, SMU, TCU, Oklahoma, North Texas, UTEP) and south (Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Houston, Rice and LSU).
Last season, the Cougars finished 2-8, 0-7 in district play. The rap on Cy Creek was that they were strong offensively but not as tough defensively.
Now, the Cougars (3-1, 3-0) have put it all together and sit alone atop the Class 5A-District 15 standings after consecutive upsets of defending district champion Cy Ridge (3-2, 2-1) and talented upstart Cy Woods (2-2, 1-2).
“We talk about being in the moment, you can’t worry about going 7-0 or 8-0,” Cougars coach Greg McCaig said. “Our kids are doing a great job buying into that philosophy, and you see it.”
Senior quarterback Austin Pugliese, one of the area’s most underrated signal-callers, finished with 413 total yards and five touchdowns in the Cougars’ 54-25 Homecoming victory over Cy Woods last Friday at the Berry Center.
“First off, the O-line came out and they really had great push,” Pugliese said. “They really stepped up and came through with the blocks. Yes, we were confident, but we don’t get cocky. We just want to be 1-0 at the end of the week.”
Cy Creek outscored the Wildcats, 33-6 in the second half, but McCaig and Wildcats coach David Jones agreed that Cy Woods senior quarterback Lucas Devilliers’ third quarter knee injury played a big part of the outcome.
Devilliers returned in the fourth quarter with the Wildcats down, 42-25, only to throw two interceptions on as many passing attempts.
Jones said Devilliers, who has 10 touchdowns and three interceptions through four games, is “very questionable” for Friday’s game against Cy Springs (3-2, 2-1) at the Berry Center.
I think the game would have been extremely competitive had Devilliers stayed healthy, but I still think the Cougars would have come away victorious.
Pugliese was finding open receivers all over the place and cutting through the defensive pressure with no problems.
And Cy Creek, which led 21-19 at halftime, now has a much-improved defense.
The Cougars last won a district championship in 2005, when they shared it with Cy-Fair, a team they’ll face a 6 p.m. Saturday at Ken Pridgeon Stadium.
The Bobcats are 0-5, 0-3, but if this season’s District 15 results are any indication, expect the unexpected.
--Many sports movies follow the same clichéd formulas, but The Express, the true story of the late Ernie Davis, was both inspiring and entertaining.
Davis, a standout running back for Syracuse University from 1958 to 1961, became the first African-American athlete to win the Heisman Trophy, awarded annually to college football’s top player.
The film focused largely on the challenges that Davis faced, on and off the field, during his sophomore year when he led Syracuse to its first-ever national championship.
I took away two important lessons from the film:
-We need to learn from the intolerance and bigotry of the past and be thankful that we have made strides to become a more tolerant society. But we still need to stand up against injustice whenever we encounter it.
-Secondly, never to take anything for granted in life or in sports. Davis was primed for a successful career with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, but was diagnosed with leukemia at age 22. He died a year later in May 1963.
Despite the fact that he never played a down in the NFL, the Browns retired his No. 45 jersey; I think that speaks volumes about his character.
--When I first moved to Texas, I thought it was ridiculous that four teams per district qualified for the postseason. After watching four weekends worth of Lone Star prep football, I’ve changed my tune.
The games are so competitive, and the talent in both Class 5A-District 13 and Class 5A-District 15 are so strong from top to bottom, that I think it’s definitely a good idea to allow four teams into the postseason.
I think it’s great that Texas has full-state playoffs. California determines its state champions through a bowl where teams are selected by a California Interscholastic Federation committee.
The Bowl Championship Series is bad enough, we don’t need its format to trickle down to the high school level, where politics are allowed to trump on-the-field performances.
--Watching football games at the Berry Center is amazing for any media member or fan. Ken Pridgeon Stadium and Klein Memorial Stadium are also impressive and considerably larger than high school stadiums in other states.
But there’s one thing that’s seems very different to me. A big part of high school football is homefield advantage, and none of the Cy-Fair ISD schools have it when it comes to district play. All of the games are essentially, neutral site contests, even though one squad is always designated as the home team.
I suppose that playing in such an excellent venue as the Berry Center makes up for losing the whole atmosphere of homefield advantage.
-- I spoke with University of Houston offensive lineman Michael Bloesch after the Cougars’ 45-20 victory over UAB on Thursday. Houston plays at SMU on Saturday, and I asked Bloesch, a 2004 Klein Collins graduate, if the game meant more to him because Houston and SMU were rivals in the Southwest Conference. It didn’t occur to me that Bloesch, now a 22-year-old fifth-year college senior, was just 9 when the conference dissolved in 1995 and four members went into the Big 12.
I think instead of converging with the Big 8, the Southwest Conference should have kept the line-up of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, Houston, Rice, SMU and TCU and invited LSU, Oklahoma, North Texas and UTEP. The former two would have added to the competitiveness of the conference, and the latter two would have allowed every Division I-A school in Texas to be in the same conference.
Arkansas, which left the conference for the SEC in the early 1990’s, would not receive an invitation back into it under this scenario.
The six-team divisions would be split up between north (Texas Tech, SMU, TCU, Oklahoma, North Texas, UTEP) and south (Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Houston, Rice and LSU).
Copyright © 2009 - Houston Community Newspapers Online