Ballinger lost in a non-district contest 66-21 to the Clyde Bulldogs. This is a hard pill to swallow after the dominating performance the Bearcats had the week prior.
Confusing the matter was that the Bulldogs were just as young as the Bearcats and did not seem to be more athletic, considerably bigger or faster.
Clyde score first in the game, but was answered quickly when Xavier Nunez completed a 75 yard touchdown pass to Edgar Nunez for the tying score. Clyde would again score on their next possession, but Ballinger would be unable to answer.
Clyde would then score to take a 21-7 lead and a series of mistakes by Ballinger would lead to an enormous 38 point 2nd quarter by the Bulldogs. By the time the Bearcats were able to stop the bleeding it was too late to mount any sort of comeback. “We have a lot of fixables that we need to work on this week,” Coach Lipsey said “If you look at the game we were down 14-7 and driving down the field on Clyde’s 28 yard line. We fumbled the ball and then mistake after mistake led to them going on a 38-0 run.”
After dominating Grape Creek last week it looked like Ballinger would be turning around. In giving up 476 yards and 66 points to an average Clyde team bad habits continued to surface. The good news is that they are all fixable mistakes if the players will learn from this game. Coach Lipsey said, “Normally in a game with this type of score you have really lopsided stats. Really lopsided time of possession. If you look at this game everything was pretty even. Our problem was that we kept giving them a short field and they capitalized.” Ballinger will have to learn quick as the schedule is not about to get any easier with road contests still to come in Merkel and Junction the next two weeks before returning to home to play Mason before starting District play.
Next Ballinger travels to face a Merkel team coming off a surprising 39-20 defeat at the hands of 2A Stamford.
