Six different Sealy scorers helped amass the most amount of points scored in nearly six years en route to the Tigers’ 65-33 win over the Sweeny Bulldogs Friday night at T.J. Mills Stadium in District 12-4A-D2 action.

Sealy eclipsed 60 for the first time since consecutive district games in 2015 (67 against Wheatley Nov. 6, and 63 against Furr Oct. 30) and did so for the first time since Head Coach Shane Mobley and Offensive Coordinator Chris Carruthers took over four years ago.

Junior classmates D’vonne Hmielewski and Haden Wernecke both returned from injury and added a rushing touchdown in addition to two scoring connections through the air while not skipping a beat.

“I think we’re starting to get our team back from injuries,” Hmielewski said. “Excluding Graham (Samonte), this is probably the healthiest team we’ve had since Navasota (Sept. 3), and we’ll get him back next week and we’ll look like a real complete team. Everyone’s coming back at the right time, and tonight was just a product of everyone coming back.”

“Feels good coming back, getting back in the memo; now that we’ve got a lot of people coming back and getting healthy, I think we can go pretty far,” Wernecke said. “(Hmielewski and I have) had that connection forever and the offensive line blocked really well, everybody blocked well. We got D’vonne to run a little bit and our connection was on tonight, all you can ask is for the offensive line to go off and they did.”

Carruthers said the musical chairs on the offensive line stopped when the perfect idea struck him just days before the contest.

“We challenged the offensive line and we started five seniors tonight. … We’ve moved those guys around trying to find the five right pieces and in middle of the week after practice I was like, ‘We’re going to start the five seniors, you guys have played so well we can’t take you off the football field,’” Carruthers said. “They answered the call. It makes the offense when you can run the ball and hats off to A’vonte (Nunn) as well, he ran like a wild man.”

Senior running back Ethan Hart and the junior Nunn capitalized on the blocks from senior offensive linemen Francisco Reyes, Robert Gaytan, Jonathan Monterroza, Anthony Moreno and Yahir Alvarez and both of the ballcarriers provided a pair of rushing touchdowns.

“We were able to run the ball when we wanted to, we were able to have time to throw the ball and nobody can stop us when we can both of those so well,” Hmielewski said.

“We haven’t been able to establish our run game a whole lot yet this year so our run game helped us tremendously tonight,” Wernecke said. “Receivers caught balls, players made plays and that’s all you can really ask.”

The defense complemented the offensive effort by shutting down the up-tempo Sweeny offense thanks in part to interceptions from senior Thomas Clark and junior Mason Klotz as well as fumble recoveries from Klotz – forced by Clark – and his classmate William Forrester. Another key cog in the defensive machine was senior Gage Grigar who forced the fumble Forrester recovered.

“My hat’s off to Gage Grigar because he’s gone from safety to cornerback, from corner to linebacker and now he’s still playing all three,” Mobley said. “We had to change our whole game plan on Wednesday and that whole game plan kind of played out for us.”

The all-around team performance helped secure a second win in the Tigers’ six-team district which pushes them closer to a playoff berth with only two games remaining.

“With Sweeny coming in undefeated in district and we were 1-1, we talked quite a bit about that this week that we’ve got to write our own destiny,” Mobley said, “Now they’re 2-1, we’re 2-1 and we’ve still got to go win next week.”

Sealy has a road trip to Wharton scheduled for next Friday where those Tigers fell to La Marque 31-24 and dropped to 0-8 overall and 0-3 in District 12. Sealy will bring its 5-3 overall record and 2-1 district mark into the penultimate game of the season.

Stats courtesy Sealy Tiger Sports Network

D’vonne Hmielewski: 14-of-22 passing, 172 throwing yards, 4 touchdowns; 7 carries, 62 yards, 1 touchdown

Thomas Clark: 5 catches, 72 yards, 1 touchdown; 7 tackles, 1 interception, 1 forced fumble

Haden Wernecke: 9 catches, 121 yards, 3 touchdowns

Mason Klotz: 5 tackles, 1 interception, 1 fumble recovery

A’vonte Nunn: 15 carries, 150 yards, 2 touchdowns

Gage Grigar: 5 tackles, 1 forced fumble

William Forrester: 6 tackles, 1 fumble recovery

Ethan Hart: 5 carries, 50 yards, 2 touchdowns

Connor Krenek: 1-of-1 passing, 26 throwing yards; 1 catch, 5 receiving yards; 3 tackles

Jeffrey Neu: 4 tackles

Reid Miller: 1-of-3 passing, 5 throwing yards; 3 carries, 25 rushing yards, 1 touchdown; 2 tackles

Joel Chavez, Hector Murillo: 3 tackles

Scoring Summary

Sweeny 7-7-12-7

Sealy 14-19-19-13

Q1

8:54: Sealy Haden Wernecke 12 rush, Connor Krenek to Wernecke, 8-0

3:26: Sweeny Trace Holmes 8 rush, Carlos Juardo kick, 8-7

2:02: Se D’vonne Hmielewski to Haden Wernecke 34 pass, 2-point fail, 14-7

Q2

11:49: Sw Holmes 31 rush, Juardo kick, 14-14

8:54: Se A’vonte Nunn 12 rush, 2-point fail, 20-14

0:53.8: Se Nunn 3 rush, 2-point fail, 26-14

0:40.4: Se Hmielewski to Thomas Clark 32 pass, Amador Lopez kick, 33-14

Q3

8:38 Se Hmielewski to Wernecke 2 pass, kick fail, 39-14

7:08: Sw Holmes 43 rush, kick fail, 39-20

5:15: Se Ethan Hart 9 rush, Eddie Gomez kick, 46-20

3:30: Sw Holmes 3 rush, 2-point fail, 46-26

2:22: Se Hart 8 rush, kick fail, 52-26

Q4

9:34: Se Hmielewski 38 rush, 2-point fail, 58-26

3:08: Se Reid Miller 7 rush, Gomez kick, 65-26

2:34: Sw Jayln Washington 34 rush, Juardo kick, 65-33