It would be easy for Lubbock High coach Mike Speck to play several of his younger players tonight against Amarillo in an effort to get them some valuable game experience going into the offseason. There’s just two problems with that.

The Westerners have already been playing a lot of their younger players throughout the year due to injury.

They’re also not ready to give up on getting one more win in 2009.

“These kids deserve every opportunity to be successful,” Speck said as LHS (2-7, 2-56 in 2-5A) prepares for its

7:30 p.m. season finale against Amarillo (7-2, 6-2). “They’ve worked so hard and committed so much to the program and done a great job. They’ve been great role models and leaders and they really want to get that third win.”

Angel Armendariz and Lubbock High will try to close out their season with a win against playoff bound Amarillo High tonight at Lowrey Field. (Geoffrey McAllister)

To do so, Lubbock High may have to come through with its biggest accomplishment of the season — bigger than beating Midland Lee or rallying to outlast San Angelo Lake View. A win over the Sandies would break a 33-year win streak Amarillo has over the Westerners dating back to Lubbock High’s last playoff appearance in 1975.

Speck said early in the week he’d mentioned the 33-year streak to the kids only briefly, and the kids know full well how long it’s been since LHS beat the Sandies.

“We’re just using that as motivation to get the guys going and something we want to try and do,” quarterback Angel Armendariz said. “We just want to end things on a good note and leave something good for the people coming up next year. If we can get a win we know for sure that will give them confidence for next year an that we’ve done something to turn this thing around from a couple of years ago.”

The Westerners are coming off an emotional loss, falling to Monterey 31-10 on Friday in the 54th battle for the Silver Spurs.

Amarillo, meanwhile, is headed toward the playoffs after turning a corner at midseason. The Sandies struggled some early in the season while trying to find an identity, but fourth-year head coach Brad Thiessen said a loss to rival Tascosa really helped set the tone for the rest of the season, in which the Sandies have won five of their last six games.

“Against Permian (the next week) we started to run the ball a lot better,” Thiessen said. “Our offensive line for the first time started to gel. The week before we’d played so poorly against Tascosa, but we had a good week of practice the next week and tried to simplify things. But we played so bad against Tascosa that something had to change.”

Since that game, the Sandies have been a ground-oriented machine, averaging just shy of 153 yards per game. Amarillo is led by running back Heath Herrington, the only player going into this week who eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark with 1,154 yards and 14 touchdowns.

But Thiessen also lauded the improvement of quarterback J.C. Casas, who has thrown for 1,215 yards and eight touchdowns. Amarillo, though, has leaned on its defense all season, and that unit has responded by leading 2-5A in yardage allowed at 246.5 per game.

“I felt like we’d have a good defense,” Thiessen said. “The kids on that side have a little more speed than we’ve had in the past and a lot of them played last year. We felt that would be an area we could hang our hat on as we developed our offense and got going on that side of the ball.”

Lubbock High looked to be doing the same early in the season after pulling the upset of the year in 2-5A in Week 2. But the Westerners, due to injuries and depth, were never able to duplicate those results, and thus will miss out on the postseason another year.

But Speck is not ready to put the cap on another season just yet, wanting the Westerners to see if they can pull off one more upset.

“I think what we have is a good model as far as our senior class is concerned,” Speck said. “We’ve discussed it for three or four weeks that we have given the lower classes a great model of how it is and now we have to find a way to kick it up a notch. We tell them from the start that if they can’t handle adversity they don’t need to come to Lubbock High and play football or any other sport.
This group has overachieved this year … and they’ve done it with injuries.
We’ve pieced things together week to week and this bunch can look back well on their accomplishments.”

High school football
Who: Amarillo at Lubbock High
When: 7:30 p.m. today
Where: Lowrey Field, Lubbock
Records: Amarillo 7-2, 6-2 in 2-5A; Lubbock High 2-7, 2-6
Radio: KJAK 92.7 FM (Lubbock)

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