Football: Cowboys Defeat South Plantation Paladins 40-20

PHOTO BY SAIGE GRIFFIN

BY ETHAN MUNCAN AND BRANDON BERMUDEZ

On Friday, August 26th, the Cooper City Cowboys varsity football team headed into their first game of the ‘16-’17 season against the South Plantation Paladins. Directly after kickoff, the Paladins started off strong with a quick touchdown within the first few minutes of the game. During the first quarter, the Cowboys and Paladins fought out continuously, going back and forth until the Paladins eventually broke through with their quarterback pump faking a pass and running it in for a long touchdown. Down two touchdowns, the Cowboys began to put pressure on the Paladins as #3 Darell Wise received a short pass, where he evaded multiple defenders and spun one off leading to a 25 yard gain. Shortly after, #5 Tyler Brown powered through to the endzone on a short run with the Cowboys first touchdown of the game and season. Late into the first quarter #24 Mark Brent received a 53 yard pass from #1 Michael Diliello that made the game 14-12. The point after is good as kicker #28 Justin Sanchez redeems himself from his first missed field goal making the game 14-13.

Into the second quarter as rain began to downpour, Diliello had a solid run to get the Cowboys at the 7 yard line, which led to another Tyler Brown touchdown and put the Cowboys up 20-14 to start the second quarter off. Shortly after this, the lightning alarm went off as rain continued to pour on the field. After a 30 minute delay, the two teams and fans went back to continue the game.

At halftime, the band put on a performance to get the crowd hyped. Going into the third quarter the Cowboys start off strong as Brent received a pass that put them on South Plantation’s 20 yard line. Immediately after that, Brent received a short pass where he ran through many defenders and dove for the pylon increasing the lead to 26-14. South Plantation threw a bad pass that got picked off by Brent and taken to the 5 yard line which lead to a third Brown touchdown making the game 33-14 heading into the fourth quarter. As the last quarter of play began, both teams capitalized with a touchdown shortly before another rain delay which ended the game at 40-20 and gave the Cowboys their first win of the season.