The Lopez football team fell to Highland Christian 30-36, dragged down by eleven penalties that hampered their forward momentum, caused turnovers, and saddled the offensive with excessive yardage, forcing them to kick off too many times.

in the first and second quarters, the Lobos and Highland Christian were neck-to-neck in scoring; 8-8 and then 16-16 as each team answered the other point for point. In the third quarter, Highland Christian inched forward by 30-22, and in the fourth quarter Lopez lost further ground to their opponent as HC scored again, making it 36-22. At the end of the fourth quarter the Lobos scored one more touchdown with a two point conversion, but at the game’s end, Highland Christian had more points on the board.

Coach Larry Berg said, “It was frustrating to watch the penalties pile up and even though the guys stayed with the game and never gave up, it was more of a loss of focus at the line of scrimmage. Guys would just forget the snap count or move too early and there’d be yellow flags everywhere. We lost yardage and we lost that forward momentum that you have to have when you’re moving the ball downfield. The guys just have to learn that if you check out for one second it affects the entire team, the entire scoring drive.”

The Lobos offense still did good work. The first touch down was taken in by Tommy Kramer on a 22-yard run and the two- pointer was scored by Colton Jardine. Jardine then tossed the ball to Mica Arps who had a stupendous 66-yard run followed up by Shawn Samuels who put the two pointer on the board. In the third quarter, Kramer scored on a five-yard run, but the two point conversion was no good. In the fourth quarter, Jardine had a six yard run to score and Samuels made the two-point conversion good on his run in as well.

Offensively, the Lobos threw 20/38 passes for 312 yards in the air and one touch down. Lopez ran the ball 30 times for 76 yards and three touch downs for a total offensive gain of 388 yards. Kramer had nine catches for 130 yards, Arps had six catches for 153 yards and one touch down and there were seven returns off the kick off for a total of 171 yards gained on the ground.

On defense, Kevin Dengler played guard on line and blocked the entire game and led the team with seven tackles. Kramer had seven as well while Samuel and Tucker had five tackles each.

The Lopez Lobos play again at home against Crescent High School on Nov. 1st, a Saturday, at 2:00 pm.