Broncos earn muddy comeback win

Published October 02, 2012 7:00pm by Josie Musico

The ground was soggy and the odds were against them Saturday, but the Meadow Broncos knew they could handle it.
Fans who made it to Happy for the specially-scheduled afternoon match watched their beloved Broncos stampede through the mud to earn a 74-60 comeback win over Follett, easily their best game of the season.

The Panthers had lost earlier in the season only to defending state champions Throckmorton and have a long history of playoff stretches. Broncos head coach Kent Allison acknowledged that Follett had quite a football team, but then again, so did he.

"Our kids never gave up,” he said. "We decided we were going to play Meadow Bronco football, and we took the football and rammed it down their throat.”

The Broncos (4-1) lost each of the two other times they faced the highly-ranked Panthers in past seasons, and at first didn’t seem to be having much better luck Saturday either. Their opponents ran two early touchdowns and landed both point-after kicks, leaving the visitors in purple and gold with a first down at their 3-yard line as the first-quarter buzzer sounded, but still behind 0-16.

They finally scored in the second quarter on a pass to senior Alan Estrada and a long run by senior Andrew Flores, but a long run by Follett’s Dakota Wood still gave the Panthers a 24-16 halftime lead. 

Allison’s halftime pep talk kept the herd fighting.

"We decided, ‘We’ve got to get something going that will give us some success,’” he said. "I said, ‘We’ve just got to do what we do and go after it.’”

Flores took the ball on the first possession in the second half and was at the end zone within seconds, but the even 24-24 score didn’t stay that way longer than the minute or so it took for the Panthers to score on a pass from Wood to Chad Lewis.
With more touchdown runs by Meadow’s Andrew Flores and Follett’s Lewis and a pass from junior Brandon Flores to Andrew Flores, the Broncos managed to narrow the deficit to 38-40. After three straight continuously-disadvantaged quarters, they finally nailed their first lead with 30 seconds left in the third on a return and cross-field sprint to the end zone by senior Rafael Urias. The end-of-quarter score was 54-52, Meadow.

The Broncos kept the action going in the fourth with touchdown runs by Urias, Andrew Flores and senior Zach England. The Panthers scored mid-quarter on a run, but couldn’t recover.

Urias secured the point-after kicks in all but two of the Broncos’ touchdowns.

The Broncos will be back at home this Friday to face Nazareth. Kick-off against the Swifts, another talented team from up north known for their tough-to-defend spread offense, is set for 7:30 p.m.