Top Ten Countdown: #3 CL Hawks 41 Boerne 38
Next up for this year’s countdown of the top 10 games will have us back on the football gridiron as the Hawks won an important game against Boerne that, at the time, catapulted CL into first place in their district race.
The Hawks have been to the playoffs for 6 of their 9 years of existence but all of those dates of first round playoff games had CL listed as the last seeded team to qualify.
This past year that would not be the case after a 41-38 win over the Greyhounds. At the end of this 2016 campaign, Canyon Lake, had a 2nd Seed for the first time in program’s history.
Boerne was having a good season and had been ranked as high as 17th in the State earlier in the year with a dominating shut-down defense that had put this school in a good position for the district race that had just begun.
The Greyhounds offense would also put pressure on a Hawk defense that was having an up and down year up to this point of games as the would prepare for a pass first and pass often offense set.
The Hawks had their offensive line as the heroes for this affair with a Slot-T Offense that was having one of their best rushing seasons.
There had been past games where the Hawk Offense would be slowed from a run to a walk throughout their existence. That would give a concern as this game started as a loss might be imminent based on previous outcomes of similar games.
So, seeing what Hawk offense would take the field for this game would be a big question to answer for CL for a chance of a win.
There was another hurdle that Canyon Lake would have to clear for a victory which would be a win over a school that would finish their season with a winning record. The Hawks had accomplished that feat just once in the past 5 years against Pleasanton in the 2013 playoffs.
This Hawk offense had been shut-down in one game when the Wimberley Texans took care of CL’s run offense in their win earlier in the season. Canyon Lake rushed for 68 yards in the Wimberley game or right at 2 yards per tote.
Take that one bad rushing game out of the season stats and you would see a dominating Hawk season running the ball. Averaging 9.3 yards per rushing attempt giving a casual fan an idea of how well this part of the game had jelled during the season.
Canyon Lake had Micah St. John out rush 4 of the opponents that Boerne had played up to that point while Tanner Faris out rushed 7 previous schools that had played the Greyhounds.
It was an explosive game for the Hawks as all the touchdown plays were 10 yards or more with a Faris run of 63 yards topping all of the scores on this night.
Boerne would take a 7-6 lead in the first quarter that would also be their last advantage as the Hawks controlled the line of scrimmage after rushing for 446 yards on the night.
The Greyhounds would make it interesting in the 4th quarter after recovering an onside kick to keep the pressure on and scoring the last 2 touchdowns in the final 3 minutes of the contest.
Canyon Lake’s defense defended the pass with timely stops and did not have trouble with the Greyhounds rushing as the line of scrimmage would get gold stars for a must win game.
1 2 3 4 Final Boerne 7 3 7 21 38 CL Hawks 13 7 14 7 41 Scoring Summary: CL: Micah St. John 46 yard run (kick failed), 9:14, 1st BH: Colton Pool 1 yard run (Wil Herbst), 4:46, 1st CL: Tanner Faris 63 yard run (Trenton Lorett kick), 2:44, 1st CL: Tanner Faris 26 yard run (Trenton Lorett kick), 6:53, 2nd BH: Will Herbst 24 yard field goal, 4:25, 2nd BH: Carter Snelling 21 yard pass from Brooks Klutts (Herbst kick), 3rd CL: Austin Brennan 21 yard run (Trenton Lorett kick), 6:05, 3rd CL: Micah St. John 10 yard run (Trenton Lorett kick), 2:00, 3rd BH: Brooks Klutts 4 yard run (Wil Herbst kick), 11:32, 4th CL: Brandon Courtney 29 yard run (Trenton Lorett kick), 3:36, 4th BH: Will McClure 17 yard pass from Klutts (Herbst kick), 2:01, 4th BH: Brooks Klutts 6 yard run (Herbst kick), 0:41, 4th Team Stats Greyhounds Hawks Total Yards 395 446 First Downs 23 22 Rush/Yards 25/100 54/446 Comp/Att/Int 24/36/0 0/1/0 Passing Yards 295 0 Punts/Average 2/37.5 1/23.0 Fumbles/Lost 2/1 1/0 Penalties-Yards 12-102 7-49 Passing Comp Att Pct Yds Int TD Ben Fulton 0 1 .000 0 0 0 Rushing Att Yds Ave Lg TD Tanner Faris 16 205 12.8 63 2 Micah St. John 17 121 7.1 46 2 Austin Brennan 14 63 4.5 21 1 Brandon Courtney 2 38 19.0 29 1 Ben Fulton 4 15 3.8 7 0 Jacob Ruff 1 4 4.0 4 0