On Tuesday night our 8th grade football team played their future teammates, the Travis Mustangs, at Travis’ new football stadium.

The game started out rough with the Bulldogs finding themselves at a 16 point deficit early in the game, but we stayed calm and kept chugging away and chipped away at that lead in the 2nd quarter when QB Clay Bouvier connected with WR Max Westbrook on a big play to put us in scoring position and then found WR Danny Jones in the endzone for a 20 yard TD pass and Kicker Noah Willis added a 2 point field goal to bring the score to 16-8 at halftime.

The Bulldogs received the kick off to start the 2nd half. RB Ayedon Robinson moved the ball on the ground, and unfortunately had two long TD runs called back but the Bulldogs scored nonetheless on a long TD pass from Clay Bouvier to WR Ben Hall to conclude a 9 minute drive. Unfortunately we botched the hold and were unable to convert the game tying XP FG bringing the score to 16-14

On the ensuing kickoff the Bulldogs managed to perfectly execute a squib kick that was recovered by the good guys, but unfortunately due to an inadvertent whistle by the officials we were unable to keep possession of the ball. Travis scored quickly to bring the game to take a 22-14 lead. Ayedon Robinson took the next kickoff back to the house for a long KR TD to tie the game up. Then Travis scored again bringing the score to 30-22. The Bulldogs quickly struck back on a Clay Bouvier to Ben Hall TD connection to once again tie the game at 30-30. Unfortunately we were unable to keep Travis out of the endzone despite some great defensive plays by defensive linemen Christian Matamoros and Jevniell Rosa-Rivera and the Mustangs scored the go ahead TD with about a minute and a half left to go up 38-30.

Louis Nicholson and Rayson Kindred did an excellent job on special teams recovering multiple onside kicks.

The most rewarding part of my job isn’t getting to score points and win football games, it’s to see the growth that takes place over these three years of middle school and continuing into high school, not just as football players but as young men. Last night wasn’t the way we wanted to end our season but that doesn’t take anything away from the great year we’ve had. I could not be more proud of this group of 8th graders. They were extremely fun to coach and taught me a lot this year. I can’t wait to see y’all shine in high school. 7th graders, y’all have some growing up to do and some big shoes to fill.

Clay Bouvier finished the season with over 1000 passing yards, over 100 rushing yards, and 15 TD passes