Hobbs football team dominates at ENMU competition
PORTALES – To say the Hobbs football team dominated the Eastern New Mexico University 7on7/Linemen Challenge is an understatement. The Eagles dominated it. The Eagles went undefeated to win the 7-on-7 and won the linemen challenge as well. Additionally, the Eagles freshmen football team finished second in the C Division.
“Our booster club invests a lot of money because these things are expensive,” Hobbs football coach Charles Gleghorn said. “They show up and work Monday through Friday, so they deserve to get to come to these. … We have great participation and it is great to see them do good at it.”
In the A Division, Hobbs swept its way through pool play, but it did face a couple of tough teams.
“This was earlier than usual. It was about a month early,” Gleghorn said. “So it was good to get some early work and to have some success too.”
Hobbs opened play against Manzano and scored on all seven drives it had. Manzano managed to score just twice. The Eagles went up against Clovis in their second game and the scoring was much closer. The Eagles got into the end zone three times while Clovis did so two times.
Against Lovington, the Eagles scored three times and picked off a pass while Lovington scored twice, and came up with an interception. Josh Beaird, who played for Hobbs last year but transferred to Lovington this year, came up with the interception for Lovington.
“Yea, (that hurt) a little bit,” Hobbs quarterback Michael Greenough said of the interception. “With his long arms, he made a phenomenal play on that one.”
When the Eagles played Hereford, Texas, they scored five times and intercepted four passes. Jimmy Harrison had two interceptions for the Eagles’ defense.
The Eagles final game of pool play was against Carlsbad. Not only did the Eagles’ defense pitch a shutout, but the Cavemen never made it past the 20-yard line. Offensively, the Eagles scored five times.
By going 5-0 in pool play, the Eagles had the top spot and a bye in the first round of championship bracket. In the semifinals, Hobbs played Manzano and once again won big, scoring five times and picking off two passes while the Monarchs got into the end zone twice.
In the championship game, Hobbs was matched up against Lea County rival Loving-ton. Greenough started the game off with an interception, his third of the day and Lovington quickly scored to take the lead. The Eagles battled their way back into the game when Greenough connected with Semaj Cotton. Lovington scored again, but that would be its final score of the day. After failing to score for the first time all day, other than when throwing an interception, Jacob Burkett picked off a Lovington pass. Hobbs then scored to tie the game at 17-17 when Greenough connected with Isaiah Vaughn. Greenough and Vaughn hooked up again in the final minutes of the game for what turned out to be the game winner.
“It is a really big honor to take this championship,” Cotton said. “Lovington, it is just amazing to beat them. They played us really good. They have gotten better since last year. They are really physical and we just came out and dug deep.”
Overall, Greenough finished with 31 touchdown passes and three interceptions. Cotton caught 12 TDs while Dylan Condarco hauled in six. Jackson Kinney and Vaughn each caught five touchdowns. Colton Owen scored twice for the Eagles and Tyson Trevino scored once.
“It’s all these receivers, they make it easy for me,” Greenough said. “They stepped up when they needed too. The defense stepped up when they needed to and the offense did perfect.”
“We have been playing together since eighth grade,” Cotton said of connecting with Greenough for 12 touchdown receptions. “We just have that chemistry.”
Gleghorn was pleased with what he saw from Greenough under center.
“That is a lot of throws through out the day. Twenty-five minute games time seven games, I don’t even know how many throws that was,” the Eagles coach said. “He threw some amazing throws. We had some great catches too. We just had some good things happen.”
Defensively, the Eagles picked off seven passes. Harrison had two while Burkett, William Childers, Michael Cantu, Joel Ochoa, and Cotton all had one each. Earning points based defensive plays, Harrison finished the day as the Eagles top defender while Ochoa and Childers were tied for second.
“Coach (Mike) Felicetti and coach (Ty) House gave our secondary the freedom today to pretty much call the defense on their own,” Gleghorn said. “They were giving them ideas and stuff, but for them to communicate back there and to be able to adjust to formations that came out of the huddle, that is really an experienced group and it is cool to see.”
In the linemen challenge, teams scored points based on how well the participants did in 10 individual events. Hobbs actually entered two teams in the linemen challenge, one team was all offensive linemen while the other team was defensive linemen. The Eagles finished top three in every event. When the challenge was over, Hobbs offensive linemen had taken first and the defensive linemen finished third. It was the second straight year Hobbs won ENMU’s lineman challenge. Clovis finished second.
“Our guys are physically strong because we work so much weight room stuff,” Gleghorn said. “But we are pretty fast too. We have some really athletic guys.”
The linemen challenge events included: 185 pound bench press, a medicine ball toss, a truck puss, a weight sled shuttle relay, an obstacle course, a tire flip relay, a 20-yard dash, a farmers walk shuttle relay, a 5-man sled push, and a tug of war.
“We don’t practice that stuff a lot, other than the bench press,” Gleghorn said. “It was pretty impressive. We got in the top three in every single event.”