Knights fall to Tigers in offensive showdown
Davis’ 3 TD passes, Williams’ interception and onside kick recovery not enough as fourth-quarter rally falls short
Junior quarterback Cole Davis shakes hands with Dripping Springs quarterback Tanner Prewit before the Knights game on Friday. The game was a battle between the two quarterbacks as they combined for five touchdowns on the night before Prewit and the Tigers prevailed, 37-30. Photo by Steven Tibbetts.
October 10, 2018
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.
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 defense stand.
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.
We played well, better than most people expected us to play, but I feel like in the end we should have come out with the win.
— Senior Deron Gage
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.
![A PRIDE-FUL WEEK OF CELEBRATION:
As part of AISDs week-long celebration of PRIDE, students of the McCallum Spectrum Club worked to create a week full of activities, prizes and helping hands to support the schools LGBTQ+ community. The club is widely available for anyone to join, and specializes in creating a safe space for students to share and give advice. While Pride month itself isn’t until June, AISD designates one week in March to celebrate and commemorate the importance of this part of the student body.
As part of the week of festivities, the club held a booth in the front hall handing out pride stickers, pins and merch to passers by. For junior Zane Joly, the booth idea was brought up as a way for students to engage with one another, and connect with the community.
“I call out to people in the halls, ‘hey, do you want stickers?’” Joly said. “We just give out free pride stickers and sometimes other free pride merch to the students of Macallum because everybody likes pride stickers.”
While the week itself is packed with a variety of different activities, the overall goal is to bring students closer together and create a safer environment for self expression at McCallum.
“The idea for the student panel largely came from the black [history] student panel that is done during Black History Month,” Joly said. “And the idea for giving out free stuff was developed at Spectrum last year.”
Joly is not only a member of the Spectrum club, but also holds a leadership position giving them a more hands-on role with the projects and Pride Week activities.
“McCallum has a very high queer population,” Joly said. “I think Its nice that we get a chance to celebrate Pride because Pride Month is during the summer, and I think its just a nice thing for the community and getting to just celebrate it.”
While the merch table at lunch was only a small part of the numerous parts of McCallum’s Pride week, for Joly this small impact made all the difference.
“The purpose of Pride is to make people not feel alone and to make them feel safe,” Joly said. “The goal is [to make people] happy about a part of themselves that theyre often conditioned to not feel good about.”
Caption by Chloe Lewcock. Photo by Shila Gill.](https://macshieldonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/53597258192_6e7168d8ae_o-1-600x338.jpg)
![BACKGROUND IN THE BUSINESS: Dressed by junior designer Kaitlyn Gerrie, senior Chamila Muñoz took to the “Dreamland” runway this past weekend. While it was her first time participating in the McCallum fashion show, Muñoz isn’t new to the modeling world.
I modeled here and there when I was a lot younger, maybe five or six [years old] for some jewelry brands and small businesses, but not much in recent years,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz had hoped to participate in last year’s show but couldn’t due to scheduling conflicts. For her senior year, though, she couldn’t let the opportunity pass her by.
“It’s [modeling] something I haven’t done in a while so I was excited to step out of my comfort zone in a way,” Muñoz said. “I always love trying new things and being able to show off designs of my schoolmates is such an honor.”
The preparation process for the show was hectic, leaving the final reveal of Gerrie’s design until days before the show, but the moment Muñoz tried on the outfit, all the stress for both designer and model melted away.
“I didn’t get to try on my outfit until the day before, but the look on Kaitlyn’s face when she saw what she had worked so hard to make actually on a model was just so special,” Muñoz said. “I know it meant so much to her. But then she handed me a blindfold and told me I’d be walking with it on, so that was pretty wild.”
Caption by Francie Wilhelm.](https://macshieldonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/53535098892_130167352f_o-600x400.jpg)
