(Hutto) — It’s a tough task to beat a good team twice in one year.
The Navarro Panthers found that out for the fourth straight year as the Lago Vista Vikings exacted revenge for a regular season loss to the Panthers and bounced Navarro from the UIL Class 4A playoffs in Hutto with a 27-7 victory on Friday afternoon.
The two District 13-4A rivals met in the district opener on October 7th with the Panthers earning a 42-21 road win, but the Vikings came away the winners seven weeks later to end Navarro’s season. The story-line repeated what happened last year when the Panthers beat Cuero in the regular season and then fell to the Gobblers in the playoffs. In 2019 and 2020, Navarro fell in playoff rematches to Wimberley each season.
The first half did not start nor end well for the Panthers in Hutto. After taking the opening kickoff and driving into Lago Vista territory, Navarro fumbled the ball and the Vikings Miles Topo took the recovery the other way 72 yards to the endzone to get Lago Vista on the board.
At the end of the half, the Panthers were stung by an unfortunate sequence that kept them off the scoreboard despite having a first and goal at the Lago Vista one yard line.
With 26 seconds left in the 2nd quarter and no timeouts left for Navarro, quarterback Bryce Nall appeared to score on a sneak. But just before the snap the Vikings were granted a timeout that nullified the play. After the timeout, the Panthers were called for a false start that put the ball at the 6 yard line. Running back Antwoin Mebane then ran the ball back down to the one. With the clock running, the Panthers scrambled to get the ball back to the referee to get off the next play but were flagged for an unnecessary roughness call when a Navarro player tried to pull a Viking off the pile. With only 8 seconds left on the clock and no timeouts for Navarro, a 10 second runoff on the game clock resulted due to the penalty and the Panthers went into the locker room down 10-0.
In the 3rd quarter, the Vikings got a 42 yard field goal from Marlon Gavarrete to extend their lead to 13-0 heading into the 4th. Navarro then got on the board on a dazzling 77 yard touchdown run by senior quarterback Nall nearly 3 minutes into the 4th quarter, but the Vikings answered with a long quarterback run of their own on the first play of their next series.
Bowen Stobb would take a shotgun snap on the next play from scrimmage and go 61 yards to paydirt to put Lago Vista up 19-7. Ethan Helton would add a 7 yard touchdown run for the Vikings late in the 4th quarter to close out the scoring.
Star players for the Panthers included Mebane and Diego Chapa, who had strong efforts for the Navarro Slot-T rushing attack. Landon Taylor blocked a Viking punt in the 1st half for the Navarro special teams. And Nick Schwarzlose and Nall had interceptions for the Panther defense.
Navarro has reached the 3rd round of the playoffs in each of head coach Rod Blount’s five years at Navarro. The Panthers finish their 2022 season with an 8-5 overall record following a 2nd place finish in District 13-4A that saw them go 4-1 in district play.