Wildcats improve to 3-0 in district

ALBUQUERQUE — If only football points worked like money, where you could take what you didn’t need yet and store it in the bank.

This past Friday night, Clovis High’s football team scored 33 more points than it needed to beat Eldorado, winning 55-21 on the road. The Wildcats, who have won their first district games by a 149-30 count, might need some of those excess points two weeks hence at La Cueva.

But the ’Cats will take Friday’s blowout victory, because it improved them to 3-0 in District 2/5-6A.

“No doubt. It’s nice being 3-0; we haven’t been 3-0 in district in a long time (since 2015),” said Clovis head coach Cal Fullerton, whose team improved to 6-3 overall while dropping Eldorado to 4-4, 0-2 district. “And we’ve got a chance to play for a district championship, and that’s one of our goals. Obviously a state championship (is a goal), but to do that you’ve got to be good in your district. ... The kids are excited about it.”

Defending state champion La Cueva — 6-2, 2-0, prior to this coming Friday’s game at Sandia — is looming for Clovis on Nov. 1. And the Wildcats certainly took care of business in their last game before their bye and the La Cueva showdown that follows it.

Both Clovis and Eldorado scored a whole game’s worth of points in the first quarter, with the Wildcats leading 20-15 by the start of the second.

Clovis scored quickly, on an opening-possession touchdown strike from Devin Gillespie to Malik Phillips that covered 75 yards. A Jeston Webskowski two-point conversion run made it an 8-0 game.

Eldorado, though, answered back with a sustained drive — Fullerton estimated the best Eagles drive of the night — which ended in a touchdown and a two-point conversion that tied the game at 8.

Clovis fumbled on its ensuing possession, setting up a go-ahead score for Eldorado and an extra point that put the Eagles up 15-8.

The Wildcats responded with a drive that ended with Webskowski scoring one of his three touchdowns. And the ’Cats added another Gillespie-to-Phillips bomb that gave them a 20-15 lead before the opening period was over.

“It was kind of a wild first quarter,” Fullerton said. “We thought we’d be in a dogfight.”

As it turned out, the Wildcats’ back-to-back touchdowns to close out the quarter were the start of 30 unanswered points to end the half, 47 unanswered in the game.

Before Eldorado finally reached the end zone again — playing first-stringers against Clovis’ reserves — the game was well at hand. Clovis had built a 55-15 lead before the Eagles’ final score.

Clovis had gone on the road for the first time this month, taken its first three-hour-plus trip since visiting Rio Rancho in Week 3. The Wildcats had handled the road, the bus, the rigors of the journey especially well. Fullerton says his assistant coaches and senior players helped out big time with that.

“That was the best part about it,” Fullerton said. “I thought our kids were really, really focused when we showed up. We had a really good pre-game, really good walk-through.”

As a result of their weeklong practicing and road-game approach, the Wildcats had standouts on both sides of the ball. Their defensive unit held Eldorado to 120 yards of total offense. As for Clovis’ own offense, aside from Webskowski and Phillips, Gillespie threw for more than 300 yards as he again subbed for starter Chance Harris, who has been working his way back from an ankle injury suffered at Lubbock Cooper in late September. Harris could have played on Friday, but Fullerton and his staff thought it best to hold him out unless he absolutely had to play, giving the ankle an extra two weeks — including the upcoming bye — to avoid taking hits, avoid making cuts.

“If we got into a situation where we thought we needed Chance, we would’ve done it,” Fullerton said. “He’s the type of kid that wants to play. He was ready to go when the ball was kicked off; that’s what you want. But as a coaching staff we’re thinking a little more about the next month or so. ... We like our chances when he’s completely healthy, especially when playing against the top four or five teams.”

Another factor in keeping Harris out is the staff’s utmost confidence in Gillespie, who rewarded it by improving to 3-0 as a starter this season.

“He’s stepped up when he’s needed to,” Fullerton said. “He’s still going to be a big part of our offense (when Harris comes back) because of his receiving skills and his leadership on and off the field.”

Having Harris tip-top and Gillespie free to play other roles, and the La Cueva game on the horizon, makes the bye week’s timing perfect for the Wildcats.

“Yeah, it really does,” Fullerton said. “You get two weeks to prepare for one of the best teams in the state; obviously that helps. ... You almost hate to not be able to play again on Friday night, but it comes at a good time, and I think it’ll make our kids hungrier to play again in two weeks.”

Fullerton says this week’s schedule will include light days Monday and Friday, with hard practicing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. “And then get after it the next week,” Fullerton added.

When the Wildcats do return to action, they’ll do so knowing their previous game was a good mettle-tester, and they survived.

“A couple of bad things happened and I think we overcame it,” Fullerton said. “That’s something we’re going to have to do when we get into the playoffs, because bad things are going to happen. And being able to overcome them is the showing of a good football team.”