The Mule Fan

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaw! Go Mules!

Welcome Mule Fans to the website that just Loves to Love on our Mules Football Team!

Again, please remember the Fall Kick-Off Picnic on this Wednesday, August 29th, where Volleyball and Football practice will take place from 4:00 to 5:00 PM and Bar-B-Q Dinner/H.S. Band Performance & Introductions will take place from 5:00 to 7:00 PM at Harry B. Orem Stadium.

PRE-SEASON WEEK THREE REPORT - MacARTHUR SCRIMMAGE

On Friday, August 24th, our football team scrimmaged a talented and athletic MacArthur High School squad.

The MacArthur "Brahmas" are ranked in the Express News ("EN") at #5 pre-season within their district. This 5A football team plays in the very challenging District 26-5A that includes the likes of EN ranked #1 Smithson Valley, #2 Madison, #3 Judson, #4 Reagan, #6 Churchill, #7 Wagner, #8 Roosevelt, and #9 Lee High Schools. The Brahmas #5 pre-season ranking seems to this reporter to be a little odd, as this team progressed last season all the way to the Division II Semi-Finals. With six returning Offensive Starters and five returning Defensive Starters, Mac has a core of talent that "knows how to win football games."

One may also remember that Mac came in 2nd to Temple H.S. at our own 7-on-7 tournament this past summer, showing solid capability at this schools Defensive Back, Receiver and QB positions. In summary, I hope I have clearly established in your minds that Mac has some kinda good football team!

Why is establishing that fact important? Well, for those that were in attendance at both our scrimmage with Mac and our scrimmage the previous week with Clemens, it might have appeared that during our scrimmage with Mac that we did not play quite as well on Defense, and played about the same on Offense (e.g., our Big "O" appeared to continue maturing on expected pace) as compared to the Clemens scrimmage... but, REMEMBER we likely played a more talent laden football team in Mac than we did against Clemens, and OUR MULES HELD THEIR OWN against a larger 5A school that was inches away from playing for the 5A Division II State Championship last year!

Note to self, Mules are tough animals that know how to work together as a Mule Team.

What this reporter was pleased to watch at our scrimmage with Mac was our young men playing together as a COHESIVE TEAM of Mules. No droopy heads, always patting each other on the backs, giving each other power fist butts, etc. This here is a TEAM supporting each other like a TEAM in the midst of a number of difficult position adjustments to find just the right blend of position-by-position talent and skill for our Mules to make the utmost of this football season.

Our Mules have already demonstrated C-H-A-R-A-C-T-E-R. YEAH BABY, when it comes down to that one play with everything on the line when perhaps things have not been going just as well as we would have liked up to that point, I'll take the character of our young men to stick together, not get down on each other, but truly buck each other up, and play tough!!!! This is what makes our Mules GREAT! "We is the Key!"

Note, we played two quarters in game-like fashion against Mac and ended up with a tie score of 6 to 6. Our touchdown came on a pass from Cody Courtney to Bobby Broadnax (Sorry, no pics this week, as the wonderful community photo-whiz, Mary Candee, was on travel this week).

One last thing to keep in mind about our scrimmage with Mac... our Coaches played it very close to the vest relative to play selection on Offense and the Defensive Sets we showed during Defense. We saw our Mules play at about half throttle... YOU GOT THAT MULE FANS, WE PLAYED AT HALF THROTTLE.... get ready Georgetown, HERE COMES DA MULES AT FULL POWER!!!!!

GEORGETOWN INTELLIGENCE REPORT

So, as I was think'n to myself about our upcoming game with the Georgetown "Eagles" this Friday, August 31st, at 7:30 PM at Georgetown, I was wondering about how them Eagles being the reigning State Champs and all in 7-on-7 Summer League Football might trans-o-late into success during regular 11-man High School Football? In erudite form, my research turned up some interesting stats....

Here is a link to an article from the Austin Statesman newspaper with a list of past 7-on-7 State Champions and what happened to them during the H.S. football season immediately following their 7-on-7 success:

http://www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/highschool/08/20/0820georgetown.html
Now, the article in the above link makes a big deal that six out of the past nine 7-on-7 state champs have gone on to participate in the state play-offs... but conversely, THREE out of nine teams did not make the play-offs, and (un-analyzed by the Statesman) FOUR out of nine had only "so-so" fall season records: two teams with 6-4 records, one team with a 5-6 record, and another with a 1-7 record (that is a one win season gang)... sooooooooooooooooooooo, just being 7-on-7 State Champion, in my book, has a pretty low correlation with fall season success.

This jives (e.g., 7-on-7 State Champs might only be so-so football teams during fall) with Georgetown's gridiron performance this reporter witnessed last Friday, August 29th, during an evening scrimmage between Georgetown and Seguin at Seguin's Jack Taylor Stadium. I was sitting in the stands at that scrimmage with Andy Allen and his son Drew Allen, Matt Vizza, my son Terry Andersen, and nearly the entire AHHS Football Coaching Staff. Chatting between Andy, Matt and I, we jointly agreed that Georgetown looked entirely beatable by our beloved Mules.

What we saw at the scrimmage was an Offense that ran the ball roughly 50% of the time and passed 50% of the time. Georgetown's QB, Morgan Mickan, IS A SOLID ATHLETE. He is a Senior that has already been recruited by University of Texas to play baseball. Mickan can run (as you might remember from last year's game). One of Georgetown's best offensive plays is for Mickan to roll-out like he is going to pass, and then tuck the ball and run. It seemed like Mickan picked up between 7- to 15-yards every time he did this to Seguin. Mickan looked a lot like New Braunfels QB Ryan Perez that we saw in the play-offs last year.

However, Mickan's receivers surprisingly dropped a number of easy catches. Also, Geogetown's Offensive line while HUGE, was sssssssllllllooooowwwwww offfffff thuuuuuuuuuu ballllllllll and stood straight-up (rather than driving out) when blocking. Do be ready Mule Fans for the visual impact of watching about six kids take the field during this Friday's warm-ups that are 6 feet 4 inches tall or larger and that weigh 270+ lbs pounds each, and one MONSTER that is probably 6 feet 8 inches and has to be a 320+ pounder.... just keep telling yourself, "slow and will be tired after one quarter" when you look at them.

On defense, Georgetown is on average about the Mule-D's size, if maybe a bit larger, and they have appear to have very good and smart Defensive Backs. This is to be expected from a good 7-on-7 team. However, Seguin did move the ball against them both on the ground and in the air.

Also, remember that Georgetown was only a 5 win 5 loss team last year that did not even qualify for the play-offs. Despite providing our Mules its sole blemish to last season's win record, the Eagles have traditionally been only a so-so football team in their own 14-5A District. Take a look at this article:

http://www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/highschool/08/20/0820prepbox.html
In the above article, Georgetown is picked ranked 10th in Central Texas by the Austin Statesman Sports Staff.

Based on all that I have seen, I truly believe our Mules can DESTROY Georgetown if we play up to our capability... this will not likely be anywhere near the challenges last year's team faced during the State Play-offs. Georgetown is an improving ball club, but does not appear to yours truly to be a "great team." Our Mules can beat'em... endastory

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING NEW VARSITY PLAYERS

In addition to last weeks move-ups, the following Mule Players were moved up to Varsity following our scrimmage with MacArthur:

#44 Stewart Korde, Junior, Defensive End
#57 Chase Munster, Junior, Defensive Lineman
#32 Rich Garza, Junior, Linebacker
#65 Rory Godley, Junior, Defensive Lineman
#11 Cullen Mills, Sophomore, Quarterback
#26 Tyler Marshall, Junior, Wide Receiver

Congratulations to all the above!!!

OTHER NEWS

Looking at recent Mule Quarterback grads, Alamo Heights might become known as the Future College Quarterback Kingdom.

Mule QB product Chase Clement, starting Rice University QB, is on the Davey O'Brien "Watch List" the end-of-season award for the best college quarterback:

http://www.daveyobrien.com/Pages/PressRelease-07_WatchList.htm

And, any serious Mule Fan might like to keep their eye on the Oklahoma University (OU) and University of North Texas (UNT) game this coming Saturday, September 1st, 6:10 PM, being shown on Fox Sports Network, that is taking place in Norman, OK, to watch Mule QB product Giovanni Vizza, at present UNT's #2 QB option for the OU game, to watch Gio get some serious playing time:

http://www.meangreensports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPID=9058&SPID=562&DB_OEM_ID=1800&ATCLID=1178782

I have it from a very reliable source that Gio has a very high probability to get, again, "serious playing time" during this game.

All for now Mule Fans!

GO MULES!!!!