BELLVILLE — Brahmas foot- ball won their first game of the sea son in dominating fashion by defeating La Grange High School August 25 at Brahmas Field with a final score of 68-20. Bellville was able to reach the end zone quick and didn’t let go of their large lead throughout the game, going up 62-13 at halftime and running the clock out for the majority of the second half en route to Bellville head football coach Grady Rowe’s 116th victory at Bellville, the most in school history.
“First off, very proud because of the tradition here and the job that Huey Chancellor did,” said Rowe on the record-breaking feat. “It’s amazing. I am very proud of that, but that’s a staff thing. That’s a kid thing because they’ve sold out for us. Proud of us defensively forcing some three and outs. With them running their pace, I thought that was really important creating turnovers early and got them kind of out of sync. Really proud of our guys up front and what they did. Of course our backs, that’s one of the strengths on our team. Our backs did a great job.”
Bellville junior running back DD Murray had himself a night with 151 yards rushing on nine carries for three touchdowns. “It’s gonna develop us,” Murray said on the win. “Just on to the next one. We got a nice competition next week and we just got to build off this one.”
La Grange goes back to the drawing board with another tough matchup against Columbus this Friday. “A difficult opponent to start off with," said first-year La Grange head foot ball coach Kyle Cooper.
“Coach Rowe and his program, they do a great job and have been established for a while, so slot T was run extremely effectively. That’s a challenge in itself. They have a great front seven on the other side of the ball, so tough to run against. It’s a starting point for us and nobody’s gonna ask us how the first game went at the end of the season. It’s about getting better. We’ll grow a ton off this, be back in the film room tomor row morning, and getting after it.”
Bellville scored their first touch down after a fumble on the one yard line from La Grange that was recovered by Brahmas senior linebacker Jacob Shepherd. Murray then ran up the middle for the one-yard score and a 7-0 lead with 11:20 to go in the first quarter. About a minute later, the Leopards went for it on their own 12 yard line and was stopped short, giving Bellville possession of the ball back and leading to a 12-yard touchdown on the first play of the drive from senior running back Sam Hranicky and a 14-0 lead.
La Grange was forced to punt from their own 20 yard line at the 7:48 mark and Bellville responded with another touchdown for 47 yards on a run from junior running back Corrian Hood. The Leopards responded on their next drive with a 74-yard touchdown pass to junior wide-receiver Julian Sherman as he caught a deep ball and bursted down the La Grange sideline for the score and a 21-7 ball game. Two more touchdowns from Murray and one from Hranicky made it 42-7 at the end of the first quarter.
The Leopards were able to get some offense going and ran for a three-yard touchdown up the middle from KV Broussard as a result with 9:40 to play in the second quarter. Bellville’s Hood answered with a 62-yard touchdown and Hranicky added another score as well to make it 55-13. As La Grange had trouble stopping the run, Hood was able to score again in the final 15 seconds of the quarter to give his team a 62-13 lead at halftime.
Brahmas running back Nic Carlile tacked on a touchdown with 8:30 to play in the third quarter and La Grange’s Thai Scott caught a long touchdown at the 4:25 mark in the fourth quarter, a second half that consisted mostly of Bellville milking the clock for a hefty 68-20 victory.
