Rattlers end regular season on high note

The Rio Grande Rattlers came to town for the final game of the season, and they hoped to spoil the Sharyland Rattlers’ homecoming. They didn’t even come close as Sharyland took home a dominating 29-7 win. This is the ninth year in a row for Sharyland to make the playoffs.

The Sharyland defense looked a little ragged in the first quarter as Rio Grande City put together a solid drive to score the first touchdown of the game.

“That’s not the way we wanted to start the game,” said head coach Ron Adame. “All credit to Rio Grande City – they took advantage of us. They kept running their quarterback keeper, and Perez is a great athlete.”

But Adame’s charges settled down and it didn’t take long for the Rattler offense to click and answer with a touchdown of their own three minutes later on a two yard scamper by quarterback Manny Campos.

Starting the second quarter, Sharyland fumbled the ball away on their own eighteen yard line, but Rio Grande City was unable to move it. A long punt put the Rattlers on their own four yard line, but Sergio Tornero broke a long run from the nine to the RGC twenty one, setting up a touchdown run by sophomore Blake Klein.

Sharyland finished out the scoring in the first half with a long bomb from Campos on his own thirty three to Edgar Alanis who ran it in to the end zone.

Despite being outweighed by a considerable margin by RGC’s big offensive line, the defense under coach Craig Krell did a good job of shooting the gap and penetrating to keep the RGC running attack at bay.

“We’re not going to scare anybody with our size,” Adame said. “We work on our speed and getting in there to create havoc.”

Midway through the third quarter, RGC turned the ball over on downs and Campos made a nice thirty yard run to set up a touchdown pass to Blake Klein. A two point conversion made the score 29-7. That allowed Adame to play some of the athletes who don’t normally get a lot of minutes. To their credit, the defense bent a few times, but RGC was unable to score after the substitutes came in.

The offense, with Seth Carter back under center for awhile, sputtered a bit, and Daniel Lince had a few moments before the final horn blew, but the final outcome had been settled by then.

The Rattlers play the Mercedes Tigers in Richard Thompson Stadium next Friday night in the first round of the playoffs.