When most people think of football in Lubbock, Texas, they think of the Texas Tech Red Raiders, not dominant high school football in West Texas. Throughout the first six weeks of the season, Lubbock Cooper, Lubbock Monterey, and Lubbock Coronado are throwing that notion on its head.
The three schools are undefeated, and boast some good wins over good teams. Coronado thumped the Andrews Mustangs and their high powered offense. Cooper shut out Lubbock Frenship, a 6A team that’s having to deal with an improved district in 2-6A. Monterey was responsible for the only blemish on the record of Abilene Wylie, a traditional power in West Texas medium-sized schools.
Each team gets it done in a different way. The Cooper Pirates win through a bruising defense, lead by hard-hitting safety Ty Thomas (who’s now back after a leg injury), rangy DE Tre Jones, and solid linebackers Caleb Hurst and Nick Sanders. The most anyone has scored on the Pirates in a single game is a mere 21 points, and they’ve only given up 13 points in their last three games, pitching shutouts in two of them.
Monterey scores their points in many different ways, partially due to their unusual use of a two quarterback system. Typically you’d want one guy to be the man in the backfield, but both Brylon Lawson and Jaron Jones have been more than good for the Plainsmen. When you combine all the ways Monterey can score on you with their solid defense, they become very difficult to stop due to their versatility.
If you want points, be sure to check out Lubbock Coronado. They’re averaging 45 points a game and only giving up 26, and their most recent effort was a lockdown of an Andrews squad that has been held below 30 points only six times since 2014. Quay Gray and Noah Sifrit are not to be trifled with through the air, the pair have linked up multiple times this year and have produced devastating results.
Now, we get to the fun part: all of these teams will play each other during the month of October.
Coronado plays Monterey and Cooper in back-to-back games on the 14th and the 21st, respectively, and Monterey and Cooper have to wait until the 28th to square off. The three schools will open district play with the other three schools in their district, but definitely can’t look forward to those high profile matchups just yet. Abilene Cooper will pose some problems for Monterey with their tall, rangy wide receivers, and the Lubbock High Westerners look improved after dropping their first four games of the season.
In district play, nothing is certain, especially not in 4-5A with all these good teams. They’ll have a tough road through the playoffs, regional play will not be easy for anyone. However, my bet’s on a team from 4-5A to pull off some big wins come playoff time.
