Football: CL Hawks Look to Improve Again this Season
Canyon Lake will begin their 18th season which puts this group of Seniors starting their existence as a newborn when the high school had their first class.
Should be a fun year after rebounding from a, 2-8 campaign two years ago by adding 6 more wins. In fact, those 6 wins had The Lake getting mentioned in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football website being a select group 5 schools that accomplished that same metric or more.
Night and Day difference for a school that had switched from their Slot-T Offensive set (11 years) to a more wide open offense that was 50/50 on running-passing plays last year. That vaunted slot-t usually had a pass play called in that 10-15% range on average.
Last season CL’s offense was 50-50% run-pass which resulted in averaging 40 points per contest which stands #1 in that category beating out that 2016 team who averaged 38 points. The Lake averaged 185 yards on the ground and 177 yards through the air last season….a pretty 50/50 statistic.
Let’s GO LAKE
Defensively. Canyon Lake clamped down on their opponents by reducing yardage given up by 174 yards per game and coupled that with forcing 31 turnovers which was 7 more than the 2014 team who finished their season with 24 take-aways that now stands in 2nd place for that metric.
It was truly a turn-around season that resulted in a 2nd place finish for district play.
CLHS did lose some high powered skilled players to graduation seeing Carter Williams-James Garza-Harris Gilliam and others cross the stage last May.
However there is still a lot of optimism with a defense that returns 9 starters that will have Linebacker Eli Hammons heading this defense after leading last year’s team with 134 tackles, 29 tackles for loss with 5 sacks.
GO Lake!
Dalton Hodges tied Hammons with 5 sacks and added 11 tackles for loss and will look to increase those numbers for his final season.
There are more defensive stalwarts returning with defensive back Ben Parma with a Hawk best of 12 pass break-ups last season and Tristan Alexander who snagged 6 interceptions and by duplicating that number would pass (pardon the pun) Eric Nelson who had 9 interceptions his senior year and finished with 11 for his career.
Leading the defensive line will Joseph Matos Padilla, DL Wyatt Roberts, DB Jacob Price, DB Cash Ziemba….the hits just keep coming for what this year’s defense will bring to the field with many more ready to step up.
The ReSporter can’t wait to see Isiah Eureste return after missing half the season with an injury and at the time made a living disrupting offenses and was brilliant on the special team unit.
GO LAKE!
On how this year has gone since the end of last year, Head Coach Sam Parker recounted, “We met as a staff and established that the big points of emphasis were football IQ and physical strength and we have done that with proven data and got them stronger and bigger physically and helped them understand where they fit in the big picture and understand their job which would help benefit the team.”
On what Coach Parker has seen so far this pre-season as they ready themselves when they kick off in less than a month, “The kids have done awesome and being here 80 to 85% for the varsity and JV for the entire Summer has been awesome and being able to communicate and having them understand what we are saying all the time has been a real good thing.”
That last line for Coach Parker feeds back on how last year’s team had to learn a whole new system on defense and offense which led to a teach and learn as last year’s season got started.
Offensively, The Lake, will have QB Jace Wheeler (6 ft, 175 lbs) returning and OL Cayden Toon (6-4, 305) and 3 Juniors that played as Sophomores last season will bring a more advanced learning curve: Victor Caldera, Phoenix Dent-McClain, and Dakota Sheffield returning into battle.
Canyon Lake was able to finish 2nd last year with a tie-breaker over Somerset and Fredericksburg. Davenport will be the pick again this season with Pleasanton-Uvalder-JFK hoping to improve enough for a chance to get a playoff invitation.
This Monday the count down will begin with the first scrimmage against Burnet on August 15th and then San Antonio Catholic, August 22nd.
Let’s GO LAKE!
