West Texas High stuns in Gruver in wild finish
West Texas High receiver Zach Bryant dives for a touchdown against Gruver during a non-district game on Friday night at Comanches Stadium. [Tucker Stroud/ Press Pass Sports]
West Texas High and Gruver didn’t disappoint from the opening kickoff to the final play of the game with West Texas High going to a back of trick in the closing minute to come away with an unbelievable 36-28 victory against the Greyhounds in a very good non-district clash Friday night at Comanches Stadium.
With the win, the Comanches stay unbeaten on the year at 3-0 and snap Gruver’s (2-1) Texas Panhandle leading 17-game regular season win streak dating back to 2023.
“We’ve preached all week about believing,” WT High head coach Jeff Smith said. “We preached all week about believing in yourself and believing in the process and good things will happen. We believed in this game and were able to come away with a huge win.”
Gruver head coach Kurt Haburther was down after the loss but knows that sometimes in defeat a lesson can be learned.
“It’s been a while since we’ve experienced something like this,” Haberthur said. “It can be good for us. This can help us refocus and redirect where we want to go and what we want to do. The first thing I told the guys after this game it’s easy to come to practice after a win but coming after a loss it’s a new focus and we’ll see where we go from here.”
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The final two minutes was a ball game all to itself. In a back-and-forth contest, the Comanches had retaken the lead on an impressive 13-play, 75-yard drive that was highlighted by a 17-yard touchdown pass from Cayde Winters to Zach Bryant on a fourth and goal putting WT High up 28-21 following a two-point conversion.
Gruver marched right back down the field and tied the game on a Briggs Satterfield fade route to Brock Butler in the corner of the endzone tying it up 28-28 with 1:33 to play.
That’s when things got wild.
WT High took over at its own 25-yard line. The Comanches ran a play on first down for no yards and called a timeout with 50 seconds left. Out of the timeout, coach Smith went to deep to his playbook calling a double pass when Winters threw a backward lateral to Zach Bryant who chunked it deep to his older brother Collin Bryant who had gotten behind the Greyhound defenders. Collin made the catch at midfield and outran the Gruver defense to pay dirt for the go-ahead score and with another two-point conversion the Comanches were in control 36-28 with 37 seconds remaining.
“We had that play called,” Smith said. “But originally one of the guys took off in the wrong direction so we had to call a timeout. We went right back to it and it worked out. We had been practicing that for a couple weeks and it paid off. Nothing like that Bryant to Bryant connection.”
On the ensuing kickoff Gruver made things very interesting. Up back Emmanuel Valverde took a short kickoff and returned the kick all the way down inside the WT High 20-yard line with 28 seconds left. That set the Greyhounds up for a potential tie but a costly holding penalty pushed the Greyhounds back to outside the 35-yard line with 12 seconds to go. With one last gasp, a Satterfield desperation heave was intercepted by Karson Bauert securing the win for WT High. The Bryant brothers were effective on both sides of the ball.
Zach helped lead a massive defensive line effort that was key in the win. Zach, a sophomore, also snagged two catches both for touchdowns totaling 77 yards. Collin was clutch on the offensive side as well. On top of his heroics late, he also snagged a 65-yard touchdown pass from Winters in the third quarter finishing the game with 144 yards.
Winters was contained in the run game for the most part by the Gruver defense but did end up with 69 yards on 20 carries with a TD. He also threw for 177 yards completing 5-of-6 passes with all but one going for scores.
“Gruver is a great football team,” Smith said. “We played great on the defensive line and that is the heart soul of this team. On the offense, we don’t throw much but we know we need to. We had a game plan in the passing game and that came through.”
Greyhound quarterback Satterfield threw for 136 yards and ran for 127 yards with a combined four touchdowns. Butler had a tremendous game for Gruver catching 11 passes for 106 yards with two touchdowns and made 16 tackles with a fumble recovery on defense.