Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Brace yourself ! Even tiny Benavides, Texas eats our lunch, hosts football championship

Article Image
Photo from Omaha World Herald Sports

From The Omaha World Herald

On again. Off again. On again.

Won again.

That's the story of the Omaha Jackals youth football team's thousand-mile trip nearly to Mexico for a tournament and a dream adventure to cap a dream season for the club of mostly north and northwest Omaha boys.

The journey ended Monday when the chartered bus of kids from Millard, Bellevue and Council Bluffs pulled into a parking lot at Omaha Northwest High School.

They piled out in the frigid wind carrying a tall trophy, shoulder pad-high to some of their smaller guys.
"What did we tell you?!" one of the boys yelled.

What they told us, in a story in these pages Thursday, was that they would represent Nebraska well. They wanted donors who stepped forward to make the trip possible when it twice appeared doomed to know their money would not be wasted. One anonymous donor was so taken with the boys, ages 12-14, that he or she gave them new uniforms.

The Jackals won the eighth-grade division of the South Texas Football Championships, played at a high school stadium in Benavides, Texas, about halfway between Corpus Christi, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

They beat two Texas teams — the Edcouch-Elsa Yellow Jackets, by a score of 13-0, and the Harlingen Cardinals, 6-0 — to claim the big trophy.

"We went to the beach, went out to eat, walked around the Mexican territory, and then we just had fun and took care of business," said running back Camm Brewer, 14, a Lewis & Clark Middle School student.

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