Six Big 7 teams still in playoff hunt

It’s Week Seven of Valley high school football and the district races are starting to take shape. With only the top four teams in each district qualifying for the playoffs, the time is now for the cream to rise to the top and for the rest to start looking forward to next year.

In District 30-6A, the 3-0 PSJA Bears and the 2-0 Nikki Rowe Warriors are the only undefeated teams remaining. The Mission Eagles, the La Joya Coyotes and the McAllen Memorial Mustangs have all split their two district games for 1-1 records. That leaves the 1-2 PSJA North Raiders and the 0-2 McAllen High Bulldogs and Juarez-Lincoln Huskies all needing to put a string of wins together pretty quickly if they have any aspirations of post season play.

In District 16-5A-2, the Sharyland Rattlers and the Valley View Tigers are both atop the standings with 2-0 records.

Nipping at their heels however are the 1-0 Sharyland Pioneer Diamondbacks and the 1-1 Mercedes Tigers. As for the remaining teams in the district, the 0-2 Roma Gladiators and Edcouch Elsa Yellow Jackets and the 0-1 Laredo Cigarroa Toros seem destined to remain at or near the bottom while the top four teams battle it out for the district championship and the remaining three playoff spots.

That leaves District 16-5A-1. These are the teams from the Division 1 schools and with this being a ten team district, they’ve been playing district games since Week Two. As a result, there is much more separation between the top teams and the bottom teams in this district. The teams that control their own playoff destiny at this point in the season are the 5-0 Brownsville Pace Vikings, the 4-0 Mission Veterans Patriots, the 4-1 Brownsville Veterans Memorial Chargers and the 3-1 Donna Redskins.

Of the remaining six 16-5A-1 teams, the 3-2 Palmview Lobos and the 2-3 Brownsville Lopez Lobos are still in the thick of the playoff race. That leaves the 1-3 PSJA Southwest Javelinas, the 1-4 PSJA Memorial Wolverines and Rio Grande City Rattlers and the 0-5 Brownsville Porter Cowboys with nothing much left to do but try to salvage some respectability by finishing their seasons on a winning note.

This week’s lineup of Big 7 games includes one that was played last night. Fresh off their huge win over McAllen Memorial last week, the La Joya Coyotes traveled to McAllen to play the Bulldogs last night. Seeing how this paper went to press before that game was played, we do not know the results of that game. However, with the Bulldogs having been outscored 111-3 by their last three opponents, they should not have been much of a challenge for the Coyotes.
Tonight’s games include Mission Veterans at Donna High, Edcouch Elsa at Sharyland, Sharyland Pioneer at Valley View and our Game of the Week, Mission High at Juarez-Lincoln.

The Palmview Lobos have a bye this week.

The game to look forward to next week is the Sharyland Rattlers at Pioneer Diamondbacks. While both teams are undefeated going into tonight’s games, it remains to be seen if they will remain that way for next week’s game.

Even if one, or even both, of these teams suffers their first district loss tonight, the Rattlers and the Diamondbacks always play each other as if the district championship is on the line. And with the Rattlers having the Sharyland ISD bragging rights since their 56-49 victory over the Diamondbacks last year, the Diamondbacks will be hungry for payback as they look to chalk up their second victory over the Rattlers since the 2014 split of Sharyland High began the cross-town rivalry.