The Sealy Tigers used a touchdown on their opening drive to seize momentum out of the gates of their non-district finale in Bay City Friday night and cruised to a 38-14 win over the Blackcats thanks to five different scorers.

Sealy senior Ethan Hart provided the bookending scores, both from 12 yards out, and executed the decision given to Offensive Coordinator Chris Carruthers on the coin flip by Head Coach Shane Mobley.

“Coach Mobley always asks, ‘Do we want the ball or do we not want the ball,’ and normally I don’t have a preference,” Carruthers said. “But I told him this week, ‘We want the ball.’ I went and told the offense, ‘We got the ball because we wanted the ball now let’s go score,’ they took it to heart and a lot of guys stepped up.”

One of those players who stepped up was junior quarterback D’vonne Hmielewski who looked more like the district MVP of last year where he made big throws and provided a short-yardage touchdown to extend the lead going into halftime.

“I thought it was very important D’vonne came out of the gates having success and set the tone,” Mobley said. “We had a good week of practice, had a good attitude and we felt like we wanted to put the ball in his hands as soon as possible and it paid dividends.”

Hart was one of the runners who benefitted from the offensive spark and he said although he didn’t exactly predict the performance he had, he certainly worked for it.

“I wasn’t expecting it but I was hoping I would and it ended up happening,” Hart said. “I couldn’t have done it without my o-line, they were the ones who set everything up for me.”

Carruthers agreed the offensive line got their job done which allowed Bryson Johnson and Thomas Clark to also register rushing touchdowns on the night.

“We kind of challenged (Hart), and Coach Joshua Kirton did a good job of getting him coached up on things we saw and he did a real good job,” Carruthers said. “The defensive line dared us to run with what they were doing, they were taking away our screens and everything on the outside and they had a five-man box so our offensive line answered the call too, they had a real good week.”

On the other side of the ball, even though the Tiger defense did not register a takeaway outside of a turnover on downs, Mobley was pleased with their effort against a young team with skill.

“Bay City is a young team but very talented and disciplined, they did secure the ball and made things happen but I’m very proud of how our defense tackled,” Mobley said.

The Sealy coaches hope this win will carry over into next week’s bye and ultimately into the Oct. 8 district opener against Royal.

“We needed to get back on track and it’s going to be great to have the flag flown for the next two weeks,” Mobley said. “We had to get fully focused and have to get fully focused on what we’ll see in district. Royal is very talented, we’re going to have to be prepared to go through a dogfight all the way through district.”

“We didn’t want to go into the bye week limping and regardless of what the score was, we wanted to have a good clean performance which we did. We had a few penalties in the first half but even then we overcame them,” Carruthers said. “Our playmakers made plays, D’vonne was D’vonne again, Connor Krenek made some big plays and Graham Samonte made a few catches.”

Hart concurred the victory was going to be a big one in the Tiger locker room.

“I definitely think it’s a confidence booster for everyone on the team and I think wining by that much is going to roll over into next week energy-wise,” Hart said. “I think it’s going to be good for Royal, we’ll have some key players back and everyone’s going to be healthier.”

The Royal Falcons fell to the Boling Bulldogs 30-27 Friday night and all District 12-4A-D2 teams will have an open week before playing the games that count for playoff seedings in two weeks.