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GAMES
RANKINGS
Tompkins sophomore Wyatt Young.
Young's 4 TDs ignite Tompkins past Travis, on to area round
KATY—The only thing that could stop Tompkins sophomore Wyatt Young on Thursday night was dehydration. And even that didn't last long.
Late during the second half of the Falcons' 49-21 Class 6A-Division I bi-district playoff win against Travis at Rhodes Stadium, Young collapsed on the field, grabbing his leg. The way he reacted made it look like a potentially serious injury.
"Nah, man, I just cramped," Young said, laughing. "Not enough water. It felt great to come right back and score a touchdown and keep my team going."
True, not long after the brief scare, Young ran in his fourth touchdown of the game from 21 yards out with 2:37 left in the fourth quarter to cap the scoring and advance the 10-1 Falcons to next week's area playoffs.
Young was terrific in his first career playoff game, rushing for 97 yards and four touchdowns on nine carries and catching five passes for 57 yards. He lined up primarily at quarterback in Tompkins' 'Wildcat' package and slot receiver.
"I'll play any position you need me to," the 6-foot, 165-pound Young said. "I can go catch, I can go run the ball, I can line up at quarterback and throw it out. I can do anything my team needs me to do."
Young entered the game completing all six of his passing attempts this season for 71 yards. He is third on the team in rushing with 262 yards and six touchdowns, averaging 8.5 yards per carry. He is second in receiving with 558 yards and six touchdowns, averaging 18.6 yards per catch.
"He is a solid football player," coach Todd McVey said. "He does a lot of good things with the ball in his hands. He hits the creases when he needs to. Being a quarterback as well, he knows our whole offense. We're blessed to have him able to move to different positions and do things for us."
It was Young's second four-touchdown game of the season. He also had four on Oct. 15 against Morton Ranch.
This performance, of course, came in a game with considerably higher stakes, and showed just how far Young has come since his first varsity game Aug. 28 against Magnolia, when he had one catch for seven yards.
"He was sitting right here afterward, and I looked at him and he was wide-eyed," McVey said, pointing to a concrete bench outside of the home locker room at Rhodes Stadium. "You know, he'd never been here. Now he understands he fits, he can play at this level. He just has to have his opportunities, and when he does, he does a good job with it."
"The game is so much faster in how it moves and how guys hit," said Young, who played on the freshman team last year. "But I learned from my mistakes and kept learning and growing."
When Young wasn't bamboozling the Tigers' defense, Tompkins' defense was filling up a highlight reel of its own.
The Falcons picked off four passes. Senior defensive back Tyler Collins got things started with a 16-yard pick-6 42 seconds into the game.
"We wanted to start the game out fast," Collins said. "We lined up, my teammates hit him, and the ball popped up. It was right place at the right time."
The Falcons' final three interceptions—courtesy of senior defensive backs Ethan Rawlings and Samuel Kalu, and junior defensive back Cody Chapman—came in the second half.
"You read their eyes and see where the receivers are running their routes," Collins said. "The quarterback's eyes will take you to where he's going to throw it, and that's what we try to work on with our zone. Read him and make a play."
Tompkins led 21-14 at the half as Travis senior quarterback Anthony Njoku completed touchdown passes to Gabriel Van Wyk and Robert Sims in the final 3-minutes, 28-seconds of the second quarter to make it interesting.
But the Falcons tightened up defensively. As the primary source of Travis' offense, Njoku was impressive at times, but not efficient enough because of an aggressive Falcons pass rush led by senior Sean Dubose Jr. and ballhawks in the secondary.
Njoku completed 14 of 29 passes for 202 yards and two touchdowns to four interceptions. He ran the ball 17 times for 56 yards.
"We knew they were a throwing offense," Collins said. "The whole emphasis was to stop No. 2 (Njoku). Work on stopping the pass. It's all we worked on all week. We some miscommunication on the back end that gave them two cheap touchdowns in the first half. We talked it up, came back out in the second half, and kept playing. We talked more, communicated more."
McVey said he liked that his defense kept the spry Njoku in the pocket instead of allowing him to trail out into space, where he is most dangerous. The Falcons scored 21 points off turnovers.
"He's a great quarterback, great competitor," McVey said. "He kept us on our heels for a while. We were out of position and those guys made plays. Kudos to (Travis) Coach (Trey) Sissom and those guys. But we made some adjustments at halftime. Our players did a better job of doing the things we'd coached them to do all week long."
Tompkins sophomore running back Caleb Blocker.
Sophomore Blocker spurs Tompkins to 5-0 to kick off defense of district title
KATY — Tompkins sophomore running back Caleb Blocker is a longtime admirer of former Seattle Seahawks star Marshawn Lynch.
"He's always been an inspiration," Blocker said. "Ever since I was a kid, I always watched him. I always wanted to be like him. I love that 'Beast Mode' factor."
On Thursday, in the Falcons' 32-28 district-opening win over Cinco Ranch at Rhodes Stadium, the precocious Blocker was a beast in his own right, bringing back memories of Lynch with his punishing, physical style of downhill running to compile a season-best 127 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries.
The 5-foot-8, 170-pounder kept his legs churning all night long as Tompkins (5-0, 1-0 19-6A) rode him to victory in initiating defense of its district title.
Blocker leads the Falcons in rushing this season with 293 yards and six touchdowns.
"He's worked extremely hard, and the offensive coaches have done a good job developing him," Tompkins coach Todd McVey said. "He's growing and getting better as a back. It's a little faster game than when he was a freshman, as he's figuring out. I'm real proud of his effort. He runs hard, he runs low, and we just want that to continue."
Blocker said reading blocks and trusting a formidable offensive line of left tackle Ashton Frank, left guard Ethan Vazquez, center Dylan Erwin, right guard Pedro Da Silva and right tackle Tyler Lynch have been essential to his rapid rise.
"I was just trusting my O-line to block their man every time," Blocker said. "Every single time I saw a hole or a crease, I just tried to hit it as fast as I could and keep moving my feet."
With Cinco Ranch (3-2, 0-1), off to its best start in four years, having no answers for Tompkins' prowess at the line of scrimmage, the Falcons took advantage.
If senior quarterback Cole Francis wasn't handing off to Blocker for 5.8 yards per carry, then he was efficiently completing 12 of 19 passes to four different receivers or keeping the ball himself for 46 yards on 10 carries in the Falcons' read-option.
"They never know what's going to come," Francis said. "We can run every single play in our playbook. Whether it's a downhill run or outside run, teams never know what's going to come."
The Cougars led 14-10 before the Falcons scored 18 unanswered points to take a 32-14 lead with 4:12 left in the third quarter. Senior receiver Joshua McMillan hauled in a 22-yard pass from Francis, one of Francis' two touchdown passes; Mario Garcia drilled a 31-yard field goal; and Blocker scored twice in a span of a little more than two minutes.
Cinco Ranch made it interesting, however, thanks to a potent passing game. Junior quarterback Gavin Rutherford found junior Fischer Reed on a 32-yard scoring dart. From there, the game hit a relatively tense stall before Rutherford found Jack McCall on a 23-yard catch for a score as time expired.
Though Tompkins got into the Cinco Ranch offensive backfield early and often for six sacks, Rutherford found substantial success against a dynamic Tompkins playmaking secondary, completing 16 of 24 passes for 194 yards and two touchdowns, completing passes to six different receivers, and not turning the ball over.
"We had to respond to a lot of adversity," McVey said. "Give Cinco Ranch a lot of credit. They came out and played very hard with great energy. They were 3-1 for a reason.
"Coming into district play, we know we're going to get everybody's best, and they gave us theirs. We're fortunate to be 1-0 in district."
EXTRA POINTS:
>> INTIMIDATING: Tompkins' defense overwhelmed Cinco Ranch up front, led by seniors Sean DuBose Jr. and Eti-ini Bassey, and sophomore Eduwa Okundaye. Cinco Ranch hardly ever had a clean pocket and managed a measly 23 rushing yards on 24 carries. "We were just getting after it," DuBose said. "We go up against a great O-line every day in practice, and that prepares us. We had to come out with a strong game and keep up that intimidation factor of our team. We have to make every team fear our name. We want to prove we're the strongest and hardest-working team out there."
>> ELECTRIFYING: The most exciting and dynamic play of the game? Credit Cinco Ranch junior Yetziel Perez Gilbes, who had a brilliant 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown with 6:57 left in the second quarter. It was the first kickoff returned for a touchdown for any District 19-6A team this season.
>> UP NEXT? KATY: Up next for Tompkins is a highly anticipated showdown with Katy (5-0, 1-0) at Legacy Stadium on Oct. 1. Last season, the Falcons snapped the Tigers' 12-year stranglehold on the district title with a 24-19 win en route to earning their first district championship. "Have a great week of practice and just focus on our stuff," Francis said. "We've got to worry more about what we're doing than what they're doing. Do what we do, preach what we preach, and keep going."