St. Paul captures second straight football championship

HEWITT — Early in the season, Shiner St. Paul struggled with turnovers, giving up too many while not forcing enough. Though conquering the turnover battle isn’t enough for a win, Cardinals’ head coach Jake Wachsmuth understood it gave his team a better chance at taking the TAPPS Division IV state championship.

With Arlington Grace Prep Academy driving late in the game, the Cardinals, up 42-34, came up with a what would be a title-clinching turnover as Jacob Darilek sacked Lions’ quarterback Jeremiah Tucker, forcing a fumble that Joseph Natal picked up for the 53-yard touchdown return, giving St. Paul an insurmountable two-score, 49-34 lead with 40 seconds remaining on the clock.

“That’s a heck of a team,” Wachsmuth said of the Lions. “They got guys all over the field that can make plays. I hate to say it but we were just trying to figure out a way to get one stop just one time. Fortunately, we got a couple of turnovers at crucial moments. Boy, they are really good. They’re really good.”

St. Paul’s offensive game plan was well known by all involved. The Cardinals were going to run the ball and try to eat up as much clock as possible to limit the amount of possessions the high-powered Grace Prep Lions had.

The opening series proved just that as the Lions showed off their explosiveness with a quick touchdown on their first offensive drive, just taking off 77 seconds of game clock on five plays. St. Paul answered with a 17-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that took 10:09, a big contrast to Grace Prep’s offensive looks.

“Well I think when you’re playing a team that good on offense…I mean we think we’re a good offensive team but we’re different and you want to try to limit how many times they touch the ball,” Wachsmuth noted. “We were satisfied with three or four yards a pop.”

St. Paul would finish the day with 63 rushes for 470 yards, led by Conor Kresta who had 42 rushes for 336 yards and five touchdowns.

“We don’t do any of that without the line with those guys blocking and fighting,” Wachsmuth explained. “It was pretty obvious what we were going to do, they knew what we were going to do, we knew what we were going to do and we just did it.”

As the offense rolled on, the Cardinals’ defense struggled to stop Tucker who had a stellar day, throwing 21-of-26 for 332 yards and three touchdowns. The sophomore quarterback also led the Lions in rushing with 102 yards on 13 carries and a touchdown.

But the turnover battle was won in the fourth where Shiner forced their first of the quarter, second of the game, with 6:24 on the clock. A Tucker to Matthew Tucker pass was completed for about 10 yards before the Cardinals stripped him of the ball. Alex Hull jumped on it to give St. Paul a key possession as they led 35-34.

Quarterback Austin Barton ran the ball for three yards on the first play, then the Cardinals relied on the push from their offensive line and the legs of Kresta to get to the end zone for a touchdown. The 54-yard touchdown drive gave St. Paul a 42-34 lead with 1:48 left as Wachsmuth opted for the point-after kick by Frank Benes, who was a perfect 7-for-7 from that distance.

Grace Prep began their drive, due to a pooch kick, on their own 38 and immediately completed a 20-yard pass to get to St. Paul’s side of the field. A few plays later, the Cardinals had their first sack of the day, forcing the Lions to call their final timeout with 53 seconds left. Immediately following that timeout, Darilek had St. Paul’s second sack of the day, forcing the fumble as Natal picked it up and returned it for that final score.

“Earlier in the year [turnovers were] killing us,” Wachsmuth admitted. “We had five, four, three … and you’re not going to win games like that. Now you’re not necessarily going to win if you don’t turn it over but you give yourself a lot better chance and the fact that we created a couple there at the end of the game was huge.”

Friday’s state title win is St. Paul’s second in a row, fourth football championship in their last six years and sixth in school history (1992, 1997, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2016). The Cardinals end their season 11-3 and, more importantly, a champion.