RAYMONDVILLE — For head coach Frank Cantu and his Bearkats, this week is just like any other week.
While many Raymondville fans are busy looking forward to a potentially decisive game against the Rio Hondo Bobcats next Friday, Cantu and his team are focused on what’s in front of them right now – the Progreso Red Ants.
“We’ve kind of stressed that all week long,” said Cantu. “It’s just another week and just another opponent, and we don’t want to have a letdown. Every week you want to get better because you never want to slow down and have to pick it back up again the next week. So we’ve been trying keep everything rolling like normal, try to keep the intensity up and prepare ourselves the best that we can for every game.”
One key for tonight’s game against the Red Ants (1-4, 0-1) is “not to come out flat.” This year the Bearkats (6-0, 1-0) have outscored opponents 153 to 75 and the team is hoping to keep the consistency going.
“(This week) we prepared like we prepare for anyone else,” said Cantu. “We realize that we are in the middle of a really good start to the season and we don’t want to let anything get by us so we watched film and we practiced. We’re trying to keep everything the same as every other week because Progreso has some good athletes and they do have some good things going on so we just want to be at our very best like we’ve been every week and just go from there.”
Offensively, the Bearkats have been on a roll racking up 1,229 rushing yards and 689 passing yards. However, the team’s strength this year has been on the defensive front.
This season Raymondville have given up an average of just 12.5 points per game and lead the district in fewest yards allowed with some big defensive games against St. Joseph (allowed 12 points) and Grulla (allowed 7 points).
Though six games, Raymondville have allowed an average of 199.6 yards per game (616 rushing, 582 passing).
The Bearkats’ secondary has also had a standout year pulling down 11 interceptions with MarcusCapetillo hauling in four INTs, followed by Deion Castillo with three and Justin Noyola with two.
“This year we felt we were going to be strong and we’ve come out and we’ve really played well defensively,” said Cantu. “I felt the front six were going to have a really good year if we could get our secondary to play well and we have.
“A lot of the guys that were here last year are more experienced and feel more confident and things that were not going for us last season are going for us this season. Everybody is play together and everybody believes in what we are doing, and we just want to ride this thing for as long as we can.”
