Pirates Top St. Pius 21-14—Off to State

Are you ready for some more Pirate football? You had better be!! That’s right – after a 2114 defeat over St. Pius High School (4-6,1-2) last Friday night at the Port of the Pirates your hometown Grants Pirates received an 8th seed in the 4-A state football tournament and will host the 9th seeded Academy Chargers (5-5, 0-3) this Friday in a home game. “Academy is a playoff team— which means they will be ready to play and advance,” said Brown “We will need to play a great game to continue our season, and trust me, we will be ready.”

To get there, the Pirates, offense and defense worked in tandem to get the “W” over the Sartans. Following a fourth down conversation to receive fresh set of downs to play – wide receiver, Cardenio Chavez, off a 28-yard pass from senior quarter back Julian Padilla scored the first touchdown of the night and sprung the Pirates to a 7-0 lead in the first quarter. St. Pius piled on 14 points of their own and by the second quarter they led the Pirates 14-7 The next touchdown for the Pirates was a 23-yard pass from quarterback DJ Chavez to Isaiah Ortega for a touchdown followed by and Andres Lazos inception of a Pius pass that he ran in for over 35yards for a touchdown to make the score 21-14 Pirates. “Once Pius threw a couple of TDs to us, we adjusted our defense to the pass and it was good timing as Lazos was able to intercept a pass and return it for the game winning touchdown,” said Brown.

“By just staying composed and playing our game---we didn’t let them dictate what we were going to do,” said Brown of what he told them at the half time talk. “Our kids are resilient in adjusting to the changes in our game plan – due to being short staffed – they rose to the occasion.”

Brown also noted that the defense had several crucial stops that forced some critical turnovers at the most opportune time “which is nice because our defense has been out of character for a couple of weeks—but appears to be back,” added Brown.

The Sartans, who ended up 4-6, 1-2, for their part, will also go to the 4A state football tournament as a 10th seed and play the eleven seeded Espanola Sundevils (7-3, 30).

The Pirate/Chargers game is scheduled for 7 pm this upcoming Friday, November 3. “I am excited for our kids—none of them have playoff experience--- you wouldn’t know it the way they are working,“ said Brown.

CIBOLA COUNTY SPORT ROUND-UP

The Lady Pirates volleyball team is 8-12, 1-5 and will play at Highland High School (1-5, 0-4) on November 2 in a district matchup. The GHS boys’ soccer season ended up with a 1-16, 0-8 record while the GHS Lady Pirates soccer team ended up 0-15-2, 0-8.

The cross-country team hosted their home meet last week and Laila Martinez placed third in the 5000-meter run with a time of 18:43.00 while fellow teammate Isabella Halley placed fifth with a time of 31:23.00. In the boys 5000-meter John Paul Miller placed 11th with a time of 17:52.00