The Bluecats lost their first game of the year Friday night in Wall, 17 to 16.  Wall remains perfect in district at 3-0, along with Early, while the Bluecats are next with 2-1 and four games left to play. Wall won the game on a field goal with only 8 seconds remaining. The Bluecats returned the ensuing kickoff to the 21 but would have needed a miracle play to win the game.  The Bluecats did have an opportunity to control the outcome late in the game as with 3:39 left Wall fumbled on the Coleman 1 yard line and the Bluecats recovered.  The Bluecats got to the 10 but faced 4th and 1 and decided to punt.  The punt went to the Coleman 41.  Wall took it from there and won the game on a field goal.  From the sideline vantage point, this seemed like the hardest hitting game of the year so far.
 

WALL - For the better part of Friday night not much went right for the Wall Hawks football team.  The five turnovers will go in that column.  When they absolutely needed to, however, things went beautifully for the Hawks.  About a quarter and a half after Wall kicker/running back/cornerback Aaron Smith booted possibly the ugliest extra point kick in West Texas this season, he recovered to nail the most beautiful field goal Wall fans had ever seen.  Smith's 20-yard field goal with 8 seconds left in the game vaulted Wall to a 17-16 victory over Coleman in a gritty District 6-2A contest at Hawk Stadium.  "I was so nervous," said Smith, who was sent out to try the game-winner in the midst of a late evening rain shower. "We had fought so hard to come back."  The game-winner was set up by a late Wall drive in the final two minutes of the game that included a couple of crucial runs by Austin Scroggs and a pair of Matt Mills' passes to Smith and Bryce Ward.  The completion to Ward was a 16-yarder that set up the Hawks (5-1, 2-0) at the Coleman four-yard line.  That set the stage for Smith's kick (the first game winner of his life) which had so much distance it probably would have been good from 35 or 40 yards away.  Coleman got the ball back with five seconds left and deep in its own territory, but it was too late.  The loss was Coleman's first of the season.

"The one thing about our kids is that they have great character," said Coleman head coach Rusty Buzzard, whose team falls to 5-1 overall and 1-1 in district. "They'll fight back and be ready to go next week."  After trailing by 10 points heading into the fourth quarter, Wall owned the final 12 minutes of the game, scoring 11 unanswered points and limiting Coleman to zero first downs over that span.  "It was tough the whole game," Buzzard said. "They just kept fighting back."  Wall had just enough time to make the comeback mean something.  "This was the kind of football game that if you paid your admission, you got your money's worth," said Wall head coach Kevin Burns, whose team heads into another huge game next week at state-ranked Early.  Much of the night, Wall fans might have wanted a refund.

The game was a defensive battle from the start, with both teams failing to find the end zone in the first quarter.  Coleman finally broke the scoreless tie with 6:28 left in the second quarter when Colton Buzzard found Curtis Yates with a seven-yard touchdown pass.  Kicker Oscar Villeda nailed the extra point and then he upped the Bluecats lead to 10-0 with a 30-yard field goal 1:54 before halftime.  Those final few minutes before halftime were marred by several turnovers, especially for Wall.  Three of the Hawks four possessions before halftime ended in turnovers - a pair of interceptions (by Coleman's Adam Vasquez and Chase Avants - and a Wall fumble.  "We were just shooting ourselves in the foot," Burns said.  Coleman had a late first half turnover of its own, Wall's Aaron Willman intercepted a Colton Buzzard pass, but the Bluecats defense didn't allow the Hawks to take advantage of it.  In all, Coleman only allowed Wall 69 total yards of offense in that first half while the Bluecats had gained 142 yards before halftime.

Early in the second half it was a gift from Coleman, a fumble deep in Hawks territory, that set up the first Wall score. Taylor Harrison caught a seven-yard Mills touchdown pass with 7:12 left in the third.  Then came Smith's less spectacular kick of the night, an extra point try that barely got off the ground and squirted way left.  Coleman responded quickly to the Wall touchdown, however, with a 26-yard touchdown pass from Colton Buzzard to Avants.  That put the Bluecats up 16-6 but the ensuing extra point was blocked.  No one knew at the time how important that block would be.  Wall closed the gap to two points early in the fourth on a Zach McCormick seven-yard run and a Willman two-point conversion catch.  McCormick finished with a game-high 90 yards rushing for Wall.  The Hawks forced a Coleman punt and then marched 76 yards before fumbling going into the end zone for what would have been the go-ahead score on a fourth-and-one with just over three minutes to play.  The Wall defense came up big again and gave the Hawks the ball back with 2:07 left.