KC’S SEASON ENDS AT ROSE | Apaches get another rare win over Rangers, move on to SWJCFC title game
By SHAWN CHRISTOPHER
Special to ETBLITZ.COM
TYLER – Kilgore College had a great start to its game here at CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Frances Rose Stadium.
It was the middle that messed ‘em up.
KC went up 14-0 on archrival Tyler Junior College, in Saturday’s Southwest Junior College Football Conference semifinal, but Tyler scored a touchdown, then scored another on a return of a blocked field goal to tie the game, and held the Rangers scoreless in the second half for a 28-17 win.
The victory sends TJC (7-3 this season) to the SWJCFC Championship Game, and they’ll host. It’ll be Navarro at TJC next Saturday at 3 p.m., for the conference title.
And for KC, the Rangers finish the season with a 6-4 overall record, and obviously made it back to the playoffs, but they had hoped before the season started to capture a third straight conference title, and maybe even get back to the national top-four playoff, which they reached a year ago.
It wasn’t to be. KC dropped three regular season games (at home to Cisco, at Tyler in the regular season, and then at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M last week), then lost to TJC in the semifinal Saturday.
In the game against TJC, KC was cruising early.
There was only one first-quarter touchdown between the teams, a 2-yard run by Keith Willis somewhat ironically this week, at least, Willis is from C.E. King High in Houston, where Kilgore High School will play its playoff game this week.
That capped a 66-yard drive by the Rangers, as Willis scored with 7:17 left in the first.
KC would double its lead on an incredible 83-yard run by quarterback Tyler Webb (14-0), and then TJC cut that in half with an 18-yard pass play from Tre Guerra to Cam Thomas (14-7).
The Rangers were moving the ball well, until they stalled out at Tyler’s 27-yard-line, and sent Anthony Monsivais, the former Longview High standout, out to try a 44-yard field goal.
The Apaches’ Skylon Louis got in and blocked the kick, and Kendall Marks scooped it up, taking it back 55 yards for the game-tying touchdown (14-14).
Monsivais would get another chance to give KC a lead, though, and got it, a 32-yard field goal late in the half for a 17-14 Rangers’ advantage that they’d take into the halftime break.
After the face-off between the Kilgore College Rangerettes and TJC’s Apache Belles at the half, the third quarter began – and the Apaches would outscore the Rangers in the second half, holding them scoreless, and getting a 30-yard pass from Guerra to tight end Johnson, which would give TJC the lead for good, and then, after a punt that was mishandled by the Rangers, KC added another score to make it 28-17, the eventual final score.
TJC managed to beat the Rangers twice this year, the first time that’s happened since 2013.
But Gooden and his staff have been masterful at recruiting, and the Rangers are sure to be back in a big way in 2025.
