Raymondville High school’s varsity football team suffered its first loss of the season losing to Hidalgo 41- 28 on Friday.

Skylore Janes scored twice for the Bearkats; once on an 89-yard run off of a direct snap and on a 52-yard touchdown pass from Bo Moreno. Moreno also hooked up with C.J. Medrano on a seven-yard scoring strike. Josh Cantu scored on a 12- yard run. Despite the final score, Head Coach Alex Leal said the Bearkats hung tough with their much bigger counterparts. “Hidalgo attacked our much smaller cornerbacks with their tall receivers but our guys had good coverage, it wasn’t like they left Hidalgo’s receivers wide open, but their quarterback threw the ball perfectly and our guys were right there defending so what more can you ask of them,” Leal said.

“At the same time, Hidalgo’s offensive linemen average six-foot-two and 315 pounds, one of them has already signed to play with the University of Houston, and one of their defensive ends is just as big. Plus Hidalgo’s quarterback and wide receivers were just perfect on Friday, I don’t know if they’ll ever have another night like that.” Leal said his team’s first loss of the season was not the result of complacency. “Our kids are very focused on what they want to do and a lot of them took this loss very hard because everyone wants to go undefeated but now they can’t,” Leal mentioned. “In our situation, we just lost to a better team so we just need to learn from this, pick up the pieces and go to the next game.” The long time coach feels some reassurance knowing his boys take losses very personally. “When the boys take a loss hard it means they care a lot about what we are doing,” Leal said. “They consistently put in a lot of work to have a great year and that is exactly how we have to look at these things.”

Raymondville hosts La Grulla during ‘Parent’s Night’at 7:30 p.m. on Friday. “La Grulla is a first year team but are very well coached,” Leal said. “They have a lot of quickness in their backfield, though they are not as big as some of the teams we have played thus far, but we still have to play our game. If we do that, we should be okay.”

IN ACTION THIS WEEK - Raymondville High School’s junior varsity and freshman football teams visit La Grulla at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday. The Lady Bearkats varsity and junior varsity volleyball teams visit Santa Maria at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Saturday.