La Villa looking to make history

LA VILLA - La Villa made school history three years ago when it reached the Class 1A regional quarterfinal round against the Thorndale Bulldogs. Unfortunately, the Cardinals fell short and their dream of capturing a state title was over. However, they will have the distinction of being the best team ever to sport a Cardinals uniform.

But the 2008 Cardinals want to rewrite history as well as they continue to march on through the Class 1A playoffs with a 43-42 win over Yorktown last Friday night in the bi-district round. If La Villa (9-2) wants to own a piece of history, it must defeat Junction (8-3) in the regional quarterfinals at 2 p.m. Saturday at Floresville.

"We have talked about it at practice and that the farthest any La Villa team has gone is to the round of 16," La Villa coach Eugene Garza said. "We want to go to the final eight and can do it with a win this Saturday and make school history as well."

The Cardinals took a gamble last Friday night against Yorktown as they scored a touchdown in overtime and trailed by one. Garza decided to go for two and quarterback Joey Felix found a seam and took it in for the go-ahead score and the win. Last year, the Cardinals lost by one to Flatonia 21-20 in the bi-district round due to a missed extra point, and Garza said he was not going to be put into that predicament again.

"Last year was a heartbreaker when we missed that extra point at the end of the game and we have never forgotten about that," Garza said. "Coming into overtime, our kids started cramping up and we figured that at this rate, we might not be able to handle another overtime.

"So, when I told the kids that we were going for two, they were excited and I could see it in their faces that they were going to get it. So we stuffed the formation and got it. The win was so euphoric and the kids hopefully will feed off it for this week."

Garza feels that after defeating Yorktown, his team has a good shot of beating Junction.

"Yorktown was a big team with tons of speed and Junction is more of a tall and lanky type of team,"  Garza said. "I feel that we can overpower them on both offense and defense. They run the Wing-T offense and a 4-3 defense, and that is something we have seen all season long. Yorktown threw the ball a lot more and we have up 28 points defensively on mental mistakes.

"We have worked on fixing those mistakes all week long, and if we can clean those up, we are going to come out victorious.

"These kids will stop at nothing to become the best team in La Villa history and are fired up about this Saturday."