Sealy Beats La Grange 42-7 in Regular Season Finale
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La Grange defensive players Dwodney Thompson (#2), Chris Supak (#5), Christian Biles (#7) and Van Hill (#13) converge on Sealy quarterback Kane Killough Friday. Photos by Jeff Wick -
La Grange’s Dwodney Thompson would come down with this interception Friday. -
La Grange punter Colt Jobb in action Friday. -
La Grange offensive lineman Sterling Walla battles his Sealy counterpart in Friday’s game.
Sealy put the finishing touches on a 9-1 regular season at the expense of the visiting La Grange Leopards Friday as the Tigers dominated on both sides of the ball to win 42-7.
But the loss is not the end of the road for the Leps (5-5 overall and 2-3 in district). Going into last week’s game La Grange had already clinched a playoff berth, and now they know who they are going to play.
The Leps will open the 4A playoffs as the No. 4 seed out of District 11 and play the District 12 champ Waco La Vega at 7 p.m. this Friday at the University of Mary Hardin Baylor in Belton. The winner advances to face the Silsbee/Sweeny winner in the next round.
“Every year in the playoffs there’s teams that go on a run. I’ve finished fourth in my district and gone to the fourth round. I’ve finished fourth in my district and gone to the fifth round,” La Grange head coach Kyle Cooper said. “We play in a tough district, and we’ve got to get ready for another tough one next week. We want to continue to grow and try to get it together.”
If La Vega sounds familiar, it should. The Leps opened the playoffs last year against La Vega and lost 562. La Vega would march all the way to the state title game after beating the Leps last season, but lost to Carthage in the championship game.
This year the No. 6-ranked La Vega Pirates are 8-2 with their only losses coming to state-ranked 4A Division I foes No. 1 Celina and No. 2 Stephenville.
Sealy gave the Leps a taste of what they may be up against again this week.
The Tigers limited La Grange to a season-low 137 total yards, including just 56 on the ground. Meanwhile, Sealy churned out 496 total yards against La Grange.
“It was tough,” said La Grange sophomore defensive lineman Darius Johnson. “We were holding them down in the first half, and then I don’t know what happened.”
Air Force Academybound Tigers quarterback Kane Killough threw for 138 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 113 yards and another score.
“We had Killough wrapped up on two of the touchdowns but he’s just a big strong kid,” Cooper said.
Sealy running back Alan Williams had a game-high 162 rushing yards and touchdown runs of 42 and 85 yards.
The Tigers were equally tough on defense, interceptions four Leps passes, blocking a punt for a touchdown and earning a safety when they forced La Grange into a intention grounding call in the endzone.
La Grange quarterback Eli Gillum left the game with an injury early in the second half and was replaced by Quade Brothers.
Dwodney Thompson was a bright spot for the Leps, snagging an interception and recovering a fumble.
Sealy led 22-0 at halftime and stretched that to 35-0 in the fourth quarter before La Grange got their only touchdown of the night on a twoyard Dillan Johnson run. Senior Jeffrey Cabrera kicked the extra point.
Friday’s game brought to an end a regular season in which the Leps only had two senior starters on defense and two senior starters on offense. Lots of juniors and sophomore grew into new roles for this La Grange team “I thought we did really well,” said junior linebacker Caleb Norwood when asked about the regular season as a whole. “We improved during the season and now we need to work hard this week to get ready for the playoffs.”