There was almost a double standard at work Wednesday night as Incarnate Word wrapped up spring football drills with its second annual spring game and at the end the scoreboard read Green 21, Yellow 15.
Or, it might have read Black 18, White 18. Whatever there was pride at stake and some high-energy enthusiasm. "I told them let's go out and play football," Coach Mike Santiago said. "Then let's have some fun."
"I thought we played well defensively," Santiago said. "And I felt good about our running game. It was a typical scrimmage and we had some good weather. I saw good things."
The Cardinals squad was divided by the number one offense and the number two defense being the Yellow team. The Green team was the number two offense and the number one defense. The offensive squads scored in the conventional ways via touchdowns and extra points and field goals. The defensive teams got points on turnovers, sacks and three's and out.
The Green team got up 3-0 in the first quarter when quarterback Paden Lynch drove his side down the field to the nine yard line and Saul Meza came on to boot a field goal. In the second stanza quarterback Shane Knight led a Green 36-yard drive culminating with a 15-yard touchdown toss to Matt Garza. Meza kicked the point after. For the game, Knight was 3-8 for 36 yards and the score.
On the night Lynch was 5-13 throwing for 77 yards. He was the leading rusher for the game with a net 55 yards on six tries. Three players had three catches in the game--Garza (39 yards), Trey Anderson (56) and Dominic Hamilton (44).
The first or Yellow offense got a fourth quarter TD when Thomas Specia threw a screen pass to Donald Geis who rambled for 16 and the score. The Yellow went for two and Specia ran over a defender at the goal line to tally the two points. "Geis had never run that screen but this spring he did get some time at running back," Santiago said.
Over on defense the Green got a pair of sacks by Randy Enriquez and by the scoring chart that gave his team six points. A pair of points came the Green's way after holding the Yellow to three and out.
Brandon Fraser was in on a pair of sacks for six points, Yellow, and that team had a pair of those three plays and a punt and that was the scoring for the night.
On defense Sonny Estrada was the leader with four solo tackles. Enriquez had three tackles including two and one-half sacks and one more for a loss. The game was turnoverless, no fumbles and no interceptions.
Late in the second quarter a scare was thrown at both squads as well as the crowd of some 300 Cardinals fans when running back Keith Brown took a solid hit to the head and neck area. After several minutes on the turf amid full attention by the UIW medical staff Brown was taken to an area hospital for testing as a full precautionary move.
"It's like your own son going down," Santiago said. "When we got out there he was moving around but it was scary. And you always think should we stop it now or do we continue to play. We told the players that as soon as we know something we will send them a blast e-mail."