For the second time in school history, Pebble Hills is 2-0 after defeating the Midland Bulldogs 42-38 , Thursday afternoon, Sept. 6 at the SISD SAC.

The Spartans were able to take control of the game early as they took a commanding 28-10 lead with less than a minute left in the second quarter. The key to their potent offense was junior quarterback, Sebastian Ochoa, who managed to score a total of four touchdowns for Pebble Hills. Ochoa, who made his second career start, has yet to commit one single turnover this season.

“I just stay calm and trust my offensive line and my receivers,” Ochoa said. “We have a great team, they keep me calm and keep me going. We just played smart, we have a really smart team and really smart staff.”

Head coach Mark Torres has been very impressed with his young quarterback these past two games, especially with the confidence he has seen Ochoa play with.

“Sebastian (Ochoa) has grown up right before our eyes and I’m pleased to see that,” Torres said.

Despite several flags against the Spartans in the first half, Midland could not capitalize.

With an 18-point lead at the half, Pebble Hills had the advantage, but Midland’s quarterback, Suddin Sapien, who had a total of five touchdowns,  put his team on his back and ran for four of his five touchdowns in the second half. This showed a weakness on the defensive side for the Spartans as they could not stop Sapien.

The game came scarily close at the end with Midland coming within reach of Pebble Hills, 42-38, with two minutes left, the Spartans were on the 1-yard line and looked to finish the Bulldogs, but were pushed back because of a personal foul. According to Torres, it was embarrassing and needs to be fixed. Despite this though, Pebble Hills crawled their way out and executed their clock-management offense to secure the win.

This is the first time in school history that Pebble Hills has defeated an out-of-city school.

“I feel like we’ve been able to accomplish goals like we didn’t think we were before,” senior running back, Caleb Gerber, said. “You know we came into this game knowing we hadn’t beaten an out-of-town team yet, so we came into this game with a goal of enduring all 48-minutes and that’s what we did.”

Photos by: Audrie Aguilar, Hannah Aguilar and Matthew Melendez

Gerber finished the game one touchdown as he played a key role in the win against one of the better teams in Texas.

“Any win feels good and how we had to do it was really good, but we had to step up, we had to finish the game out, we had to go in and actually win the game,” Torres said. “We weren’t sitting there waiting for them to make a mistake because they had a game plan in their second half and we had a tough time dealing with it, but we did just enough early and we had to play 48-minutes and that was one of our goals and I think we did that.”

This team’s future is already looking bright with sophomore, Devean Deal, who helped in the win by scoring one touchdown giving the Spartans a 28-10 lead at the end of the first half.

“We played our hearts out, the defense kept them off the score board pretty well basically, except for that last touchdown, and on offense we executed and we played well, and they couldn’t do anything to stop the front line,” Deal said. “The coaches put us in good position, and I want to thank everybody that came out here.”

The Spartans looked to start the season strong and they’ve performed exceptionally well as they remain undefeated with an extremely tough schedule as they go on the road to battle Chapin next Friday, Sept. 14, at Tony Shaw Field at Irvin High School at 7:00 p.m.