Fort Stockton continued down an undefeated path as they claimed a victory over the Horizon Scorpions from El Paso, Friday night at Panther Stadium.

“(We) wanted to establish the game early,” said Coach Jeremy Hickman, who felt as though “Both the offensive and the defensive lines really controlled the ball game.”

The Panthers did just that when cornerback, Randy Sandoval, intercepted Horizon’s pass on the first drive of the game.

Senior quarterback, Marco Garcia threw for 98 yards with one 14-yard pass to Fabian Silva for a touchdown. The offense was led by senior running back Isaiah Valasquez who rushed 11 times for 144 yards and a 1-yard touchdown carry. Senior running back Corbin Luna’s production wasn’t far behind with 88 yards rushing on 11 carries with 2 touchdowns. Luna’s first rushing touchdown put the Panthers on the board in the first quarter.

Offensively, things were off to a good start, being able to follow Hickman’s game plan of establishing the run game to open up the playbook for the Panther’s offense. Ther Panthers were able to move the ball around effectively all night, rushing for a total of 385 yards and passing for 123 yards.

“Defensively we really focused on tackling and coverage; I felt like we did an excellent job at that,” Hickman said.

With the defensive numbers to back his statement up. From the start, the Panthers’ defense controlled the line of scrimmage and limited the Scorpions’ offensive efforts. The Scor- pions were held to just 95 yards rushing and only 57 yards passing. With the strong defensive display, Fort Stockton was able to keep Horizon from finding the endzone all night. The Varsity Panthers hit the road this week for a non-district matchup against Crane for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff. The Cranes are 1-2 on the season, winning their season opener in McCamey, 50-32; falling by two points in a 38-36 loss at Kermit, and another 2-point loss in a 42-40 loss to the Reagan County Owls.

Seventh grade White ties

The seventh grade White tied Del Rio, 6-6, Thursday. The Panther fight player of the game for white team was Brayden Bejarano

7th grade Blue falls

The Fort Stockton Middle School seventh grade Blue The Panthers kicked off their home opener and their first game of the season against the Del Rio Rams. The panthers would not go down without a fight but came up short, losing to the rams 8-0. Brayden Gonzales stepped in on defense to help the Panthers and make a few stops. On offense Mason May and Alejandro Rodriguez would both carry the ball for the Panthers and make great runs against the rams.

The Panthers fought a hard game with great pride and look forward to getting back to work on Monday looking for that first win of the season for next week’s game at home against Crane

8th grade White falls The Eighth Grade White Team traveled to Del Rio for their first game of the season, falling 30-14. The White Team started the game well and ended the fourth quarter with a touchdown, competing to the very end. Notable efforts came from Jordan Caballero with 2 Fort Stockton Touchdowns and from Jeremiah Vela on multiple defensive stops.

Even though the game resulted in a loss, the White Team got their first game jitters out of the way and are excited to bring this experience to the rest of the season.

8th grade Blue opens with loss The Eighth grade Blue team dropped their season opener 30-16 to Del Rio Thursday night in a hard hitting affair. After cutting the deficit 14-8 on a run by Michael Patino, the young Panthers gave up a long kickoff return for an 22-8 halftime score. They continued to play hard and a score on a pass from Adrien Rivera to Nicky Sotelo cut it to 22-16. Caleb Wilson and Rivera led the defensive effort.

JV Panthers roll Horizon The JV Panthers took a long bus ride to Horizon High School on Thursday and came home with huge 40-6 victory. The defense played well, shutting the Scorpions out in the first half while scoring twice to help give the Panthers a 28-0 halftime lead.

Angel Mendoza was a huge factor on defense again this week. He returned a fumble for a touchdown and blocked a punt that was return by Divani Palacios for a score.

Offensively, Ryan Chavez, Leeland Ibarra, and Daniel Lopez each had a rushing touchdown. Nick Almendariz added a touchdown pass to Mario Morales.

The JV Panthers will make their season debut at Panther Stadium Thursday against Crane.

Freshman Panthers fall The Freshmen Panthers fought hard last night against Horizon but did not come out with a victory. The final score was 27-22.

Offense: Two of our touchdowns came from deep pass from Rylee Muniz to Angel Lujan one of them was a 66-yard pass and the other was just as deep. The first 2-point conversion was scored by Esai Ramos. Rylee had a rushing touchdown from 65 yards out.

The defense made some good plays from the linebacker and defensive line positions throughout the game. We just had too many mistakes on the defensive side.

Albert DeLeon, Ivan Pena, Matthew Villanueva and Marshall Daggett contributed to this report.