Area football: Shiner, St. Paul return from bye to close out regular season

Both Shiner teams are back in action after bye weeks to close out the season. The Cardinals play at former six-man team New Braunfels Christian while the Comanches host Kenedy.
St. Paul at New Braunfels Christian Academy
The Cardinals have a unique game this week as they close out at New Braunfels Christian.
The Wildcats have competed in six-man football in past seasons and went up to 11-man this season.
They are 1-7 in their debutante season in 11-man, defeating Lutheran North.
St. Paul head coach Jake Wachsmuth said NBCA has adjusted to playing 11-man football.
“In six-man, every offensive player can catch the ball and there is not realliy an emphasis on linemen so they had to adjust to having offensive and defensive line play in the  mix,” he said.
The ‘Cats are averaging 23 points a game and giving up nearly 54 points a game.
Key players are QB Parker Jospeh, WR-DB Crew Wright,  WR-DB Cole Reynolds, RB-LB Cade Becker and OL-LB Breighton Owens.  
Wachsmuth said NBCA is a very pass-heavy team with 80 percent of its plays are passes.
“It’s going to be a different as most teams we play are run heavy or balanced,” he said. “Our defense will need to mix up coverages and not stay in one look against a pass offense.”
It will be business as usual for the Cardinals offense.
“We have no turnovers in our last game against CTC. We also need to continue working on eliminating penalties and control the football. It will be interesting to see if we can continue to to have no turnovers sine we are coming off a bye week,” Wachsmuth said.
Kenedy at Shiner.
Shiner plays its last game of the regular season against Kenedy at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Comanche Stadium.
Shiner is sitting in second in district following a 38-27 loss to Refugio on the road Oct. 21 with a 4-1 record. The Lions are 4-5 overall and 2-3 in district for fifth place.
“Kenedy has got good size on the lines this year,” Shiner head coach Daniel Boedeker said.
Kenedy is scoring 26.5 points a game and yielding 34.5 points a game.
The Lions’ offense is nearly almost all run and they have 3,081 yards on the year, avering 342.3 yards a game.
“They run the Slot-T and are a power-running team,” Boedeker said. “Our defensive line has to play physical; the linebackers and secondary will need to read their keys well. Even though they run the ball most of the time, they can also run bootleg play-action passes.”
Daniel Pena is the leading rusher with 1,346 yards on 163 carries, 8.3 yards a carry,149.6 yards a game, a long run of 80 yards and 14 touchdowns. Owen Espinoza has 761 yards and six touchdowns while David Salas has 637 yards and four touchdowns.
The Lions will go either 4-3 or 5-man front on defense.
“Our offensive line will need to get a push and stay on blocks,” Boedeker said.