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Tag: Vandegrift coach Drew Sanders

Vandegrift Football off to great Start

Written by Tucker Stephenson on . Posted in HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

The Vandegrift Vipers have already served notice to the rest of Class 6A that their program is an up-and-coming powerhouse in Central Texas.

While most teams hang their hats on an explosive air-raid attack or a dominant running game, Vandegrift is taking the opposite approach. Head coach Drew Sanders’ Vipers have become known for their suffocating defense, which has led to three district championships in the past four seasons.

Defeating Cedar Park this season 42-7 in week 1, Killeen Ellison 31-14 in Week 2 and San Angelo Central 45-13 in week 3 the vipers kicked off district play with a defeat of Stony Point 56-21 off to a 4-0 start.

During the pandemic-riddled 2020 campaign, Vandegrift finished second in District 25-6A behind a resurgent Round Rock team that stunned the state by taking out Lake Travis in the first round of the 6A Division I postseason. This year, Sanders and his retooled defense will look to regain their form following a fourth-round playoff exit against Hays in early January.

The Vipers graduated each of their top five tacklers from last season, but there’s no shortage of depth for Vandegrift. Along the front line, senior defensive end Tucker Harrison returns after a stellar year in 2020 that saw him register 79 tackles, five sacks and four forced fumbles en route to earning all-state honorable mention. Harrison will likely be joined at the point of attack by junior Oliver Yndo, senior Sterling Emerson, senior Lucas Cummings and senior Cristion Davis.

The linebacking corps will search for replacements for the trio of Austin Skoglund, Logan Arnold and Michael Mastrodicasa, who combined to make 342 total stops in 2020 while finishing as the team’s top three tacklers. 

However, there’s plenty of experience back in the secondary, which is led by senior Jaxon Oliver, senior Griffin Shaffer, senior Clayton Moore and versatile senior Reece Beauchamp, who might see more time on offense in 2021. Oliver tied for the team lead in interceptions last year with three.

Vipers Defense in 2020 gang tackel a Round Rock Dragon runner in last years game.

Beauchamp could end up taking the reins for 2021 graduate Ryan Back at quarterback — or perhaps it will be junior Brayden Buchanan. Whichever player settles into the signal caller role will allow the other to become an instant play-maker in a different spot, whether it be at wide receiver or in another position. 

The starting running back job appears locked up, as senior Ryan Sheppard returns after leading the team with 922 yards and six touchdowns as a junior. Sheppard is also a reliable receiver out of the backfield, as he made 13 catches a year ago.

Along the O-line, the Vipers will reload with one of the top groups in District 25-6A despite seeing only one starter — Ethan Barnard — return. Barnard is set to move from guard to center as a senior, and help is expected to be provided up front by senior Juan Gutierrez, senior Luke Collins and junior Ian Reed, who is a budding collegiate prospect at tackle.

When league play rolls around, the Vipers will look to battle past Round Rock and reclaim their familiar perch as district champs. Challenges from Hutto, Stony Point and Cedar Ridge are also expected, but Sanders’ team looks to have the inside track in the race for 25-6A’s top spot.

Vandegrift’s first 11 seasons of varsity competition have yielded an overall record of 94-40, and the Vipers’ 4-6 campaign back in 2010 — the program’s inaugural year — remains the lone losing season in school history. 

Vipers edge out Dragons

Written by Steven Ryan on . Posted in HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

Round Rock proved a worthy challenger for Vandegrift’s District 13-6A throne, but the defending league champs got a stellar game out of senior quarterback Dru Dawson and made a couple key defensive stops in the final frame to maintain their supremacy with a 32-25 win Friday at Monroe Stadium in Austin.

“We needed this,” said Vandegrift coach Drew Sanders. “This is good development for us, and I told the guys all week that this is going to be a playoff atmosphere. This is going to be like a 4th round 6A playoff game, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Dawson completed 17-of-20 passes for 275 yards with four touchdowns and an interception while adding 69 yards with his legs in by far his best game of the year. He also made a pair of big plays on a fourth-quarter touchdown drive to push the Vipers ahead for good.

After a 19-3 mid-game run allowed Round Rock to take a slim one-point lead, Dawson heaved a deep ball in stride to junior wide receiver Taylor Dumar for a 39-yard gain to the 15. Three plays later, he scrambled around to give his guys extra time to shake free and found senior tight end Brady Middleton wide open in the end zone for a go-ahead touchdown. 

“His improvement just continues to go up, and up, and up,” Sanders said. “He was so accurate tonight. He made one bad throw the whole night, really. Other than that, when he couldn’t throw it, he took off and ran. He had several nice runs for us, too. And then on the sideline when we had a little of that lull… I heard him over to the side talking to his guys and encouraging them, and that’s just what I need from my senior quarterback.”

Round Rock rolled up 348 rushing yards and 23 first downs, by far the most Vandegrift had given up in either category all season. But the Vipers succeeded in their game plan to take senior wide receiver Collin Sullivan out of the game. The Division I signee (Purdue) finished with just one catch for nine yards (albeit, a touchdown).

“We were not going to allow them to big-play us,” Sanders said. “We were going to bleed a slow death and our philosophy worked.”

After retaking the lead with Dawson’s fourth quarter heroics, Vandegrift’s defense stepped up on consecutive possessions with a three-and-out and a fourth-down stop in the red zone. 

“We’ve been in kind of an odd front the last several games. We had to go back at key points in our game and go back to our even front on defense, made some adjustments there and stopped them,” Sanders said. “A critical stop that we had that we needed, was because we went back to something we’ve been doing for years. We just haven’t done it much this year.

“It was nice to see us be able to adjust and do it immediately. Our kids, I always tell them, their secret weapon is how smart they are, and they were able to really adjust to what we were doing and make plays. It’s hard for a defense, when you stop everybody all year long, and you come against an offense like this, that is scoring on you, it’s hard for you to not get down on yourself, and those guys found a way to rally, keep themselves mentally pumped up, and find a way to win.”

The offense proceeded to run the final 5:21 off the clock with some bruising runs by junior running back Bowen Lewis (24 carries, 118 yards, 47-yard TD reception), a fantastic catch on a deep ball by senior wide receiver Trey Mongauzy (7 catches, 132 yards, TD, 32 yards rushing) and pivotal seven-yard run on third down by Dawson.

“Round Rock is going to have a great rest of their year. Hopefully, we do, too,” Sanders said. “To be able to win a third or fourth round 6A playoff game, like what tonight was, that just speaks volumes to our kids, coaches and everybody else.”

Vandegrift beats Cedar Ridge

Written by Steven Ryan on . Posted in HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

Vandegrift allowed its first score of the season, but that was it as the Vipers corralled Cedar Ridge’s all-everything running back Duece Vaughn in a 28-7 victory Friday at Dragon Stadium in Round Rock.

“How you control someone like Duece Vaughn, because he’s a generational talent, he’s that good, is more than one person,” said Vandegrift coach Drew Sanders. “So we found a way tonight to get more than one person to the point of attack. So when he looked up there were two or three Vipers there, and that’s a credit to our coaches for great schemes and our players for executing.”

Vaughn, a dynamic 5-foot-7 dynamo committed to Div. I Kansas State, was contained to 118 total yards (99 rushing, 19 receiving) after going for more than 200 against the Vipers last season. The rest of the offense produced just 99 as Vandegrfit held Cedar Ridge to 217 yards on 50 plays for 4.3 yards per play.

Senior linebacker Jax McCauley was all over the place, as usual, but it’s always a team effort with the Vipers. The secondary held Cedar Ridge quarterbacks to 9-of-19 passing for 87 yards (4.6 yards per attempt) and intercepted a pass. Meanwhile, the defensive line was in the backfield all night with Matthew Graham, Jordan Cochran and Rickey Sweeney leading the way.

“Our D-line over the years, if anybody watches us, is kind of our calling card,” Sanders said. “We have a bunch of guys who aren’t super impressive physically, but we put just great athletes that our kinda strong there and we use (that) they are faster than the offensive lines. So that’s what we do well and you saw that on display tonight. Hopefully we can keep doing that, and then as the game went on, we increased our pressure because we felt like they were getting more tired and we just rotate a bunch of guys. We have a bunch of guys that go in. We have like five or six guys that can play and you can see the freshness as the fourth quarter happened.”

Vandegrift stole the momentum early when McCauley recovered a blocked punt in the end zone on the first drive of the game.

“We worked that all week. We found something studying tape,” Sanders said. “My special teams coordinator Coach (Ed) Wolkind found something so we worked all week that block. I told everybody we were going to go for that very first punt. To get it is fun for the kids to be able to do that, what a great start for us to be able to go three & out, blocked punt for a touchdown. It’s about as good as you could do. We just kind of sent a message that, you know what, last year wasn’t a fluke. Hopefully, we’re here to stay.”

From there the offense grinded Cedar Ridge down with the run game and hit on three big pass plays to put the game out of reach. Junior running back Bowen Lewis rushed for 107 yards on 22 carries, his third straight 100-yard rushing game, and hauled in a 47-yard touchdown pass to make it 14-0 late in the first quarter.

Dru Dawson and Taylor Dummar celebrate one of their 2 TD strikes in Friday Nights victory over Cedar Ridge of Round Rock in the handsome win 28-7. Photo Jenna Friedrich for Texas Sports Monthly

Junior wide receiver Taylor Dummar had the other two touchdowns. He got wide open for a 40-yarder in the second quarter to put the Raiders in a 21-0 hole and then made a more contested catch on 3rd and 10 in the third quarter for a 31-yard score that re-established Vandegrift’s 21-point lead. Senior quarterback Dru Dawson finished 7-of-12 for 153 yards with the three touchdowns and one interception.

“It started with our run game. Our run game opened up our passing and our coaches put in a good game-plan. It’s pretty easy for me when the guy is wide open,” said Dawson. “We put in a lot of motions and shifts that get the defense to change and that’s one of our pride and joys and it came out tonight and worked really well… Very proud of our team but we have so much potential to show. So that’s the exciting thing, but it was a great win all-around.”

Vipers shut out Timberwolves 17-0

Written by Steven Ryan on . Posted in HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

No. 2 Vandegrift started its season right where it left off. The Vipers delivered a dominant defensive performance, just like they did so many times last year, in a 17-0 shutout of No. 6 Cedar Park at Monroe Stadium on Friday in Austin.

“It’s impressive,” said Vandegrift coach Drew Sanders. “My defense surprised even me tonight because we replaced a lot of guys. We didn’t have everybody back. We replaced several guys on the defensive line, both corners, replaced a safety and replaced a linebacker, and for us to come out and play like that is just total belief in our system, and they really played with great effort.”

Vandegrift held Cedar Park to 140 yards on 49 plays for 2.9 yards per play and completely stuffed the ground game for two yards on 24 carries. Going back to last year’s matchup, the Vipers have kept the Timberwolves off the scoreboard in seven of eight quarters.

Cedar Park didn’t even cross midfield until the fourth quarter and needed a fake punt to do so. Junior defensive back Kaleb Lewis had two interceptions, the second of which came in the end zone late in the game to extinguish the Timberwolves’ best scoring threat.

“Our coaches really drilled it into our head to stay in coverage and a lot of those two plays were (Cedar Park quarterback) Ryder (Hernandez) scrambling around and I just kept my eyes on him and read his eyes, and when he threw it I was just sinking into place,” Lewis said. “It was just super exciting because I get to trust all those guys and I really trust them and you can tell with how we all play and communicate and I was just in the right position because we trust the coaches and they gave us good play calls.”

Vandegrift leaned on two players for almost all of its offensive production with junior running back Bowen Lewis and senior wide receiver Trey Mongauzy combining for 252 of the Vipers’ 275 total yards. Mongauzy broke the Vipers out of an early funk by breaking free for a 59-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter and finished with 10 grabs for 125 yards. Lewis iced the game with a 54-yard scoring burst in the final minutes while posting 127 yards on 23 carries.

“That’s a play we ran against Klein Collins in the second round (of the playoffs) last year and I caught it for a lot of yards. (Cedar Park) is super aggressive and they tried to undercut, so just putting a double-move corner-post on them, we knew it was going to work,” Mongauzy said of his score. “Just a lot of studying. Throughout the game, we were finding holes in their defense and we kinda just attacked them. We found good rhythm and were just hitting everything.”

Vandegrift follows its resounding season-opening win with a Thursday night road game at Killeen Ellison next week. Cedar Park will hope to rebound with a home game against Round Rock Cedar Ridge on Friday.

Drew Sanders Vandegrift Vipers 2019 Preview

Written by Tucker Stephenson on . Posted in HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

AUSTIN — The current era of football has become known as the golden age of offense.

However, Vandegrift head coach Drew Sanders isn’t ready to concede anything to the high-octane, spread-it-out attacks that have been piling on the points across the Lone Star State.

“We take pride in our defense at Vandegrift,” Sanders said. “We had the No. 1-rated defense in our district last year and we’re excited to see if we can do that again. It’s definitely a challenge. Every team we play has one to two to even three Division I players on the offensive side of the ball.”

The Vipers emerged as the District 13-6A champions last season behind a stingy defense that held opponents to a mere 13.8 points per game before allowing 56 in a third-round playoff loss to Longview. Vandegrift, which went 12-1 overall in 2018, will look to once again put the clamps on its district foes this season and will be led by all-state linebacker Jax McCauley, who made 156 tackles as a junior.

Sanders said McCauley is the complete package.

“Jax’s effort is tremendous,” Sanders said. “He never takes a play off, and because of his great effort he’s always around the ball because he’s equipped with some size and speed. Then there’s his preparation. The guy studies the game — he will actually watch tape every day of his opponent and will report back to us on what he finds out.”

McCauley is one of several returnees to the defensive side of the ball in 2019, along with defensive end Trevor Harrison and defensive backs Tyler Mongauzy, J.J. Parker and Kaleb Lewis. Sanders said junior defensive back Logan Arnold may also join the mix this season to add even more ability to the back end of the Vipers’ defense.

“Our secondary will be very experienced and athletic,” Sanders said. “We’ll have to replace some losses at linebacker and defensive line, but we feel good about the guys we have coming up.”

On offense, Vandegrift welcomes back quarterback Dru Dawson and his top target — wide receiver Trey Mongauzy. Junior running back Bowen Lewis, who is Kaleb’s twin brother, looks primed to step into a starting role. Sanders also said sophomore wide receiver Blake Youngblood could make his presence felt on the outside.

Up front, the Vipers have a pair of all-district offensive linemen in Harry Witt and James Collyer, who will try to pave the way for another balanced attack. Last season, Vandegrift averaged close to 200 yards passing and rushing in each contest while scoring just over 31 points per game.

Those impressive numbers helped the Vipers put together the best season in program history, but Sanders said no one is looking too far ahead as his squad prepares to tune up for an encore performance.

“We’d love to have continued playoff success, but in order to have playoff success, you’ve got to get there,” Sanders said. “A state championship is still the ultimate goal for us and we talk about that. We haven’t been there yet. We’ve been in the third round several times, the fourth round and even the fifth round one year, but we’ve had a hard time trying to get to that state game, so we’re striving hard to do that.”

The Vipers will once again compete against eight other foes in 13-6A. The field includes Cedar Ridge, Hendrickson, Round Rock, Stony Point, Westwood, McNeil, Leander and Vista Ridge.

Sanders said it certainly won’t be smooth sailing, but he also acknowledged one advantage of being in such a sizable league.

“Because you’re in a nine-team district, you can lose one and be a district champ,” Sanders said. “It isn’t just a top-heavy district — everybody is pretty good. You’ve got to make sure your preparation is really on point because you only have a couple of games to prepare for the ones that matter.”

Vandegrift beats Tomball Memorial 35-14

Written by Steven Ryan on . Posted in Football, HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

District championships are won in the regular season, but the greatest of high school football glories are achieved in the playoffs. After polishing off its first perfect season in school history last week, Vandegrift (11-0) took the previous sentence to heart and started the postseason with an exclamatory 35-14 win against a strong Tomball Memorial squad (8-3) in the bi-district round of the playoffs Friday at Monroe Stadium in Austin.

In what Vandegrift coach Drew Sanders called a “total team win,” the Vipers held the Wildcats 28 points below their season average and to 283 yards on 50 plays for 5.7 yards per play, while the offense totaled 488 yards on 60 plays for 8.1 yards per play in what was their greatest scoring output against a playoff team all season.

“They’re a good opponent,” said Vandegrift coach Drew Sanders. “For us, we just needed to go out and play our game, and we did that. (I’m) really impressed… Offense was very good and defense was outstanding.”

The Vipers are used to getting outstanding performances from their defense, which ranks among the top in Central Texas, but it was the offense getting career-best performances from senior quarterback Dru Dawson and senior running back Isaiah Smallwood that allowed them to win by a comfortable 21 points.

Dawson threw for 278 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions on 16-of-19 passing while adding 24 yards and a score on the ground. Smallwood pounded away for 180 yards on 29 carries with a touchdown.

“(Offensive balance) opens everything up,” Sander said. “When you can throw, then they start to widen and it allows you to run, or vice versa. When you start running, they hunker down, and it allows you to throw… I’m really proud of (Dawson). He threw the ball well… (We) protected well. We ran the ball well.”

A seven-yard run touchdown run by Dawson and 44-yard scoring dash by Smallwood gave Vandegrift a 14-0 lead in the second quarter. Tomball Memorial cut the lead in half with a 19-yard touchdown scamper from sophomore quarterback Colton Marwill. 

The Vipers reasserted themselves, however, with two touchdown passes from Dawson to Trey Mongauzy (five catches, 76 yards). The first came in the final minute of the first half, the second in the opening minute of the second. 

The Wildcats got the deficit back down to 14 with a 19-yard touchdown connection between Marwill and senior Jordan Grice. But Vandegrift put the nail in the coffin when Dawson faked one of the short perimeter throws he had been completing all night, got the defense to bite and unleashed a beautiful 71-yard bomb which senior Brendon Bennett hauled in on the run for the game-sealing score.
Vandegrift senior Ryan Merrifield led all receivers with six catches for 105 yards. The Vipers will play Klein Collins in the area round next Friday at 1 p.m. at Waller.
 
“We’ve never made it past the second round in 6A. It’s right here in front of us” Sanders said. “We’re playing a very strong 6A team. Klein Collins has been one of the better 6A teams for probably the last eight years so this is a great matchup for us. If we really want to prove that we’re elite in 6A, because we said that’s one of our goals, we got to beat an elite team, and here we go.”