From staff reports
San Marcos — The San Marcos Baptist Academy Bears treated their fans to a nice home-opening victory, jumping all over the Brooks Academy Bengals by a 44-0 margin.
The Bears took the opening kickoff and gave the Bengals a steady dose of grinding Slot-T offense, mixing inside and outside runs for a clock-eating 17 play touchdown drive that burned nearly the entire first quarter. Keith Shimek capped that drive with a 1 yard run.
The Bengals appeared ready to answer quickly, using two play-action passes to get deep into Bear territory, but the SMBA defense came up with consecutive big plays from Malcolm Williams, Will Haskin and Nick Shadid to kill the threat. The Bears then struck quickly when Shimek burst through the middle, broke three tackles and outran the Bengal defense for a 90 yard touchdown run.
The next Bear touchdown came on a long Anthony Richardson punt return, which gave SMBA a 18-0 cushoin going into halftime. Early in the third quarter, Mark Hamm became the second Bear to return a punt for a touchdown. Hamm also turned in the next huge SMBA play, picking up his own fumble, reversing to the opposite side of the field and breaking away from the Bengal defenders for yet another long touchdown run. The next Bear to contribute a big play was defensive back Nick Shadid, who picked up a Bengal fumble in stride and took it to the house from 60 yards. Brady Wickersham concluded the productive nigh for the Bears by scoring from 4 yards out. The Bear defense shut down Brooks Academy for most of the game after the opening Bengal drive, but the Bengals did threaten one more time in the fourth quarter, but the Bears forced and recovered a fumble inside their 5 yard line.
The Bears ran for 412 yards on the night as they improved to 1-1 on the season. Brooks Academy fell to 0-1 with the loss. SMBA Head Coach Brian Gaylor, who earned a Gatoraid shower from his young team in celebration of his first win as a head football coach, was pleased with the team play of the Bears.
Next week the Bears travel to Runge to face the Runge Yellowjackets.
