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Amarillo by Friday morning
November 13, 2007After I cover Holliday-Boyd Thursday night in Graham, I will be headed to Amarillo Friday for Burkburnett, Vernon and Graham's games against Panhandle teams.
This is the fourth year I have covered high school football full-time at the paper, and the third time I have made the trip to Amarillo.
It is one I usually like making because I get to see 2-3 games in a 24-hour span. And I will never forget the first time I made the trip back in 2004.
I was supposed to cover three games that weekend: Quanah-Stratford, Henrietta-Panhandle (both at Bivins Stadium) and Holliday-Spearman (in Canyon, about 20 miles south).
Henrietta whipped Panhandle 40-20 the first game on Friday night, but with all the scoring, the Quanah game was running late.
While writing the Henrietta win, I was watching Quanah and Stratford engage in a ridiculous shootout. If memory serves me correctly, Quanah took a lead with about two minutes to go, but Stratford drove the field and scored with about 30 seconds left for a 40-35 victory. It was one of the best 10 high school games I have seen.
The game ended past midnight -- maybe 12:15ish. And I remember making final deadline (the early deadline for our area towns had already passed) by a couple of minutes.
The next day I woke up to drive to Canyon, only it started snowing. But not the icy flakes we get here, but huge blizzard-like snowflakes. It was like out of a movie.
The field was covered in snow. You couldn't see yard lines and it was a struggle to identify players from all the way up in the pressbox. And it snowed the entire game.
Holliday won an amazing double overtime game. They rallied to force OT with a last-minute drive, and then had to match Spearman in the first overtime after the Lynx had made a TD and two-point conversion after a botched snap.
The weird thing about that game was Holliday QB Zach Stewart. He hadn't really thrown the football well all year long -- I think he had a couple of zero-yard efforts -- and yet in a total blizzard, the worst condition to throw the ball imaginable, he threw for 200 yards and a couple of scores.
If my trip to Amarillo this weekend is half as exciting, then it will be a good weekend.
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