When the varsity football team faced the Dripping Springs Tigers last Friday at House Park, both of the team’s offenses were rolling.

It wasn’t that the offenses were making huge plays every time they touched the ball. Instead, both teams were consistently able to get multiple first downs and methodically drive the ball closer and closer to the opposing team’s end zone.

The biggest reason for the two offenses’ success was in the play of their quarterbacks. For the Knights, junior Cole Davis lit it up through the air, passing for three of the Knight’s four touchdowns. For the Tigers’ senior quarterback Tanner Prewit, the work was done on the ground. Prewit led his team in rushing yards and scored two rushing touchdowns.

The Knights got off to a good start, scoring a touchdown on a Cole Davis’ pass to Tino Depaz on the opening drive of the game. The Tigers then responded with three good drives in a row resulting in two field goals, one of them good from 42 yards, and a touchdown to take a 13-7 lead. The Knights scored their second touchdown, and only one through the ground, on a touchdown run by senior Deron Gage to briefly regain the lead before Dripping Springs pulled ahead 16-14 at the end of the half with yet another field goal.

Then, in the third quarter, the Knights offense blinked while Dripping Springs’ offense started to finish off drives with touchdowns instead of field goals. The Tigers scored two touchdowns on their first two possessions of the second half while the Knights offense was forced to punt twice in a row. Already up 30-14 late in the third quarter, the Tigers looked to effectively end the game with another drive that took them deep into McCallum territory. Right as it appeared that the Knights would soon be down by three scores, safety Gabe Williams intercepted a pass near the 5-yard line to give the Knights a much-needed defensive stand to and a chance for a comeback.

The Knights offense responded to the new glimmer of hope by scoring a touchdown on a pass from Davis to Cruz Escobar. The Knights failed on the two point conversion, however, which kept them behind two scores, but then surprised the Tigers with an onside kick that was recovered by Williams. Less than two minutes later, Davis connected with Gage to put the Knights behind 30-27 with about eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. The Knights defense just needed one more stop to give the offense a chance to complete the 16-point comeback. Instead, the Tigers scored on their biggest offensive play of the game, as Prewit ran in a touchdown from near midfield to put the Tigers up 37-27 with about seven minutes left.

The Knights were able to respond to this near knockout blow from the Tigers with a field goal, putting them down seven with about four minutes remaining. Then the Knights defense did something that they had only been able to do once in the entire game. They forced a punt. The red hot McCallum offense got the ball back with about two minutes left in the game at their own 20-yard line. Quickly, the Knights moved the ball almost to midfield, but the Tigers stopped them on an incomplete pass on fourth down to win the game.

Although some small mistakes added up to cost the Knights their third straight loss, they played well overall.

“We played well, better than most people expected us to play,” Gage said. “But I feel like in the end we should have come out with the win.”

After the game, head coach Thomas Gammerdinger preached the importance of staying focused and limiting mental mistakes.

“There were a lot of things that went wrong in this game,” Gage said. “But as we take the coaching I feel like we can make it better.”

This loss puts McCallum at 2-3 for the year and 0-2 in district play, but LBJ and Drippings Springs are most likely the two toughest teams to beat in the district. If the Knights limit some of their mental errors and continue to play at the level they showed against Dripping Springs, they may be able to win the rest of their regular season games and build some momentum heading into playoffs.

The second half of the Knights 10-game regular season starts on Friday when they will be facing Lanier.