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Pirates’ late surge not enough against Sabina
Published October 17, 2009
CENTER POINT — A late rally in the fourth quarter wasn’t enough to overcome early miscues as Center Point fell to district foe Sabinal 37-20 Friday night at Pirate Field.
Pirate running back Frankie Martinez rushed for 107 yards and two touchdowns, and quarterback John Wigington threw for 67 yards and added a touchdown on the ground, but untimely penalties and costly turnovers doomed the Pirates.
Center Point (3-4, 0-4) got on the board first with a 1-yard dive from Wigington early in the first quarter.
Sabinal answered later in the quarter when Steven Sanchez scored on a 12-yard run.
On the next possession, Martinez, fighting for extra yards, was stripped of the ball and Sabinal returned the fumble 49 yards for the score and a 14-6 lead.
After halftime, Pirate miscues on the shotgun snap led to a safety for Sabinal, and it capitalized on the good field position after the free kick when Clarence Parker broke through the Pirate defense for an 11-yard touchdown run to push the score to 23-6. After two more scores pushed the Yellowjacket lead to 37-6, the Pirate offense finally found its rhythm.
Martinez scored on runs of 23 and 15 yards to pull the Pirates within 17, but after covering an on-side kick, Wigington’s pass was intercepted and the rally ended.
“I’m extremely proud of our team,” said Center Point coach Danny Langbein. “We’re facing a lot of adversity right now after we lost our starting quarterback (David Garcia). John’s filling in and doing a great job. He’s just real young and we need to learn the game of football a little more. It’s a process, and we are going to focus on the positives. We are getting better. If we would have played this way last week, we would have won the game.”
Langbein said, while he was proud of the effort, his team has to quit shooting itself in the foot.
“That’s the problem now, we just continually shoot ourselves in the foot,” he said. “Our quarterback needs to get rid of the ball a little quicker and that’s a learning process. But Frankie always runs the ball real hard — he’s an asset. I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of our season turns out.”
Center Point travels to D’Hanis next week to face one of the top teams in the district, and Langbein hopes they can play the role of spoiler.
“We want to go out there and spoil their fun. We’re working on one heartbeat right now, and this team needs to understand what that means.”
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