High School Football

Seven Lakes suffers season opening loss to Memorial

By Tyler Tyre, Sports Editor
Posted 8/26/22

“We weren’t good enough, and we are all going to take this as a learning moment,” Turner said. “Everyone was mad when we walked in, and there were a lot of us that were frustrated. No one wants to feel that way next week, we’re going to fix it.”

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in
High School Football

Seven Lakes suffers season opening loss to Memorial

Posted

Seven Lakes learned a tough lesson on Thursday night.

The Spartans learned that any number of small mistakes can pile up and lead to a loss, no matter how well you play outside of those mistakes.

With a team full of players who haven’t started much on the varsity level, it was an important lesson to learn, but that’s exactly what it is. A lesson they all can learn from.

The Spartans suffered a season opening 17-13 loss to Memorial as they faced off at Tully Stadium, in a game that wasn’t decided until the final minutes and went back and forth all night.

“We just have to learn, we have to learn from everything that happened tonight,” said senior defensive back Bryce Turner. “There’s lots of things we can take from this, we know we have to get better with our conditioning, we know we have to prepare more and we have to take our opponent seriously. We can’t let our foot off the gas even for one play at any point.”

It was only a few plays that made the difference in the game, but that’s the growing pains of a team learning how to compete and win at the varsity level, and for head coach Jimmy Hamon, that is something of a positive, the Spartans went through this and can learn from it before they get to their district opener.

“You never want to lose, but you’d always rather have something like this happen in non-district,” Hamon said. “I was just telling them the same thing, this doesn’t stop us from achieving our goals, this won’t stop us from making the playoffs. We have a nine-team district and we’re going to have to be one of the top four and I think we can be. We’re going to be faced with this type of game and this type of circumstance again and having gone through it, they know what needs to be done now. This can motivate us more and make us hungry and that’s what needs to happen, I’m hoping that’s the way we take it.”

Seven Lakes opened the game on a strong note, taking the opening kickoff and going on a 74-yard drive that lasted over ten plays, but a fumble at the goal line kept the Spartans from scoring at all and handed the ball back to Memorial.

The Spartans defense though was up to the task early on, they kept Memorial off the board through the first quarter and early in the second quarter Marcel Davis got the Spartans on the board with a 7-yard touchdown run that gave Seven Lakes a 6-0 lead.

Things stayed that way until the very last seconds of the first half, as Memorial drove down the field and as time expired scored on a 24-yard pass from Chase Goodwin to Tyler Navarro, a score that the Spartans defense was still frustrated with after the game.

“We weren’t good enough, and we are all going to take this as a learning moment honestly,” Turner said. “Everyone in that locker room was mad when we walked in, and there were a lot of us that were super frustrated. No one wants to feel that way next week, we’re going to fix it.”

Memorial took a four point lead in the third quarter off a field goal but Katy answered back with a strong drive where Barrett Hudson drove the team down the field on a big screen play followed by a big run pay, and Jake Farris capped things off with a 3-yard run into the endzone to hand the Spartans back the lead, 13-10 with nine minutes remaining in the game.

Hudson ended the night with 90 yards rushing and 58 yards receiving, both tops on the Seven Lakes team while the Seven Lakes offensive line was able to make holes for the running backs all night.

“That’s one thing we can really take from today that we did well,” Hamon said. “We really rode Josh Vetter, our left tackle in the run game and we were able to do some good things. That drive in the third quarter we ran it right on Josh’s shoulder and he did a great job with their defensive end. Barrett has the patience and the willing to cut back inside to that crease and so it’s a great combination. I was really proud of the way they were able to play off each other and of that drive.”

The Spartans defense held on the next drive, but with the Seven Lakes offense pinned back near their own goal line after the punt, Seven Lakes went 3-and-out and gave Memorial another opportunity.

The Mustangs did not let the Spartans off the hook, driving down the field and scoring on a 30-yard pass, again from Goodwin to Navarro to take the lead with just over two minutes remaining. Seven Lakes was unable to answer back, turning the ball over on downs to end things.

The Spartans are frustrated, but they’re moving forward, and they know they have what it takes to bounce back.

“It’s a relatively new starting varsity team,” Hudson said. “I think starter wise we only have a few coming back, so for everyone to have already experienced a two minute drill on both offense and defense is huge. Obviously we wanted it to end differently, but we are going to learn from what we did wrong and correct it.”

Memorial 17, Seven Lakes 13

Seven Lakes

0

6

0

7

 --

 13 

Memorial

0

7

3

7

 --

17

Second quarter

SL: Marcel Davis, 7 run, 11:44

M: Chase Goodwin 24 pass to Tyler Navarro (Matthew Lewis kick) 0:00

Third quarter

M: Lewis 32 field goal, 8:13

Fourth quarter

SL: Jake Farris 3 run (Jon Franco kick) 8:42

M: Goodwin 30 pass to Navarro (Lewis kick) 2:22

Team stats

Memorial

 Seven Lakes

  First downs

 18

16

  Yards rushing

22-80

37-167

  Yards passing

225

85

  Passes

7-13-2-0

15-27-0-0

  Punts

  2-48.5

3-35.3

  Fumbles-lost

  1-1

1-0

  Penalty-yards

  4-38

6-50

Individual Statistics

Rushing – Seven Lakes: Barrett Hudson, Barrett Hudson, 20-90; Jake Farris, 12-75-1; Marcel Davis 4-16; Tanner Perez, 1-(-14); Memorial: Ethan Spears 13-51; Cooper Gindorf, 7-24; Chase Goodwin 2-5;

Passing – Seven Lakes: Tanner Perez, 7-13-85-0-0; Memorial: Chase Goodwin, 15-27-225-2-0;

Receiving – Seven Lakes: Barrett Hudson, 3-58; Marcel Davis 2-14; Landon Ross, 2-13; Memorial: Kyle Siblik 9-135; Tyler Navarro, 3-67-2; Robert Fowler, 2-23

Katy ISD, Seven Lakes, sports, football, high school