BECKVILLE, Texas — The regular football season is officially over in East Texas and as we reign in the bi-district round of playoffs, only a handful of area programs topped their district, earning a top seed in the UIL bracket.
On Friday night, the Beckville Bearcats became one of those teams after winning back-to-back district championships, earning head coach Cody Ross the title of Coach of the Week.
“It's very rewarding, you know," Coach Ross said. "I'm proud of our kids, first and foremost, and our coaching staff. They put a lot of time and work into this. I don't think that people realize, and I tell our kids that a lot of times in the locker room I said nobody outside of this room or in this building really understands all the preparation and the things that go into what we do.”
A player that has understood the assignment all season long is senior athlete Bo Hammons. Him and J'Koby Williams have wreaked havoc on the field, both defensively and offensively. Something Hammons said was fueled after their season opening loss to Timpson.
“It was a hard loss that first game," Hammons said. "But it felt good to get rolling again get started up. Now playoffs is coming around, and we're ready to play. We're a different team than we were last week.”
In their District 10-2A Division I finale, the Bearcats came out aggressive, needing only three plays to score three touchdowns allowing their junior varsity team to get reps in in the second half.
"Union Grove didn't have enough kids for a JV and normally we do a pretty good job of finding a JV but with it being late in the year last week of the season, it's tough to do so," Ross said. "No knock on Union Grove, but I felt like we had a chance to get up on them early and and I told them if we do, you guys are going to get some varsity experience.
"So I think we played eight plays with our starting unit, we played about four more plays with our twos and then we started the third quarter with our JV going out there and getting in the game.”
From this point forward it’s win or go home, and for the bearcats, that means it might just be a rematch of their only loss this season, the Timpson Bears, if both teams can make it to the regional finals.
“It's a tough one right out the gate." Ross said. "We always talk about where we want to get to right now and Timpson owns the region. I mean, they have the last couple of years have been the regional champ and we want to take the next step and win the region. We want to be regional champs and so we got to play those guys anyway.”
The region just being a stepping stone, because like every program in the state of Texas, Coach Ross has his eyes on that state championship.