St. Paul are champions again

HEWITT — For the third time in four years, and the seventh time in school history, Shiner St. Paul (6-8) can call themselves champions.

Down 14-0 in the first quarter to the Lake Country Christian Eagles (8-5) out of Fort Worth, the Cardinals turned things around by taking advantage of turnovers and scoring 29 straight, which was enough for yet another comeback win for St. Paul.

“It’s kind of like our year,” St. Paul head coach Jake Wachsmuth said. “I mean really, it was that way last week.”

“I guess they like that,” Wachsmuth added with a chuckle, “I don’t know. I don’t like it. I could go for just being ahead 30 to nothing.”

The offense didn’t get going until the second quarter when Kai Giese completed a 38-yard reception to Cole Brown to jump start their drive. Joseph Natal was handed the ball five straight times, ending with a 12-yard touchdown rush to cut the lead to 14-6. Natal got another score with 4:29 left in the half on St. Paul’s next offensive drive. Giese, meanwhile, scored on a five-yard scramble, and later found Dalton Jahn from 10-yards out on a 3rd-and-eight play to put St. Paul up 29-14.

“[Giese] had a nice touchdown, made a big pass — to kind of get us going — to Cole when we were down 14-0, hit a big ball,” Wachsmuth said, “but golly we can talk about a whole lot of kids now. Joseph, Kai, the linemen, you don’t win this without a whole lot of guys.”

Natal was the main ball carrier for the Cardinals, rushing 31 of St. Paul’s 48 carries for 151 yards and two scores. Noeh Boedeker added 10 carries for 46 yards to the state book while Giese had six for 56 yards and a score.

“[Natal has] battled some stuff this year, he’s just been a great senior leader for us,” Wachsmuth said. “We could be here awhile talking about him, and really all the seniors because when you’re 0-7 as seniors and you’re thinking ‘well maybe basketball…’ no, they stuck with it and they hung with it. Very proud of them.”

Over the air, Giese went 4-for-12 for 66 yards, a touchdown and one interception. Jahn caught three passes for 28 yards and a score. Brown had a reception for 38 yards.

Defensively, the Cardinals recovered three fumbles, including one on a pooch kick to start the second half. This Shiner St. Paul team that struggled with turnovers earlier in the season won the turnover battle, which proved to be the difference.

“Those turnovers were huge,” Wachsmuth noted. “We had struggled with turnovers, we did had one today, but earlier in the year we turned the ball over a lot and that definitely helped us.”

With 2:36 left in the game, the Cardinals defense was called upon one more time, this time up 29-21. The Eagles threw two straight incomplete passes to end their drive and their season with no timeouts and 57 seconds left on the clock.

The win marks trophy number seven for the St. Paul football team. Wachsmuth now has five state championships as a head coach. This win also gives this senior group their third football championship in their high school career.

“They won three state championships [as] freshmen, sophomores and seniors,” Wachsmuth said of the senior group. “My guess is they’re probably the first group that’s ever done that at St. Paul. We had a lot of good kids, a lot of good teams and some of that just kind of happens, but the way they did it this year I think they’re always going to remember, they got a lot of memories from this year. The trophies and the medals, those go away, but they got some good stuff and I’m proud of them.”