The Brazos Cougars ushered in the Audie Jackson era in fine fashion last Friday with a 34-13 victory over Hempstead in the season opener for both squads.

Junior Jarvse Dickerson rushed for 187 yards and five touchdowns to pace the Cougars attack in claiming the home opener.

“I’m extremely excited,” Jackson said. “It was a lot of fun for our kids and coaches to get out there and compete against someone other than ourselves. We played in front of a great crowd.

“It was my first victory here in Brazos. It was great to coach along with my son and he got his first win here as an offensive coordinator,” Jackson said of his son Audie Jackson Jr. who serves as offensive coordinator for the Cougars. “It was good to see a lot of the kids that are new to high school football get their first win under their belt.”

Jackson said he was pleased with how the Cougars reacted to their first game of the season and how much their hard work paid off for the victory to open the season.

“I can tell you that our kids have worked very hard over the last few weeks to earn the victory,” Jackson said. “They were relieved and overjoyed at the same time. When you play 3A football, these kids play an unbelievable amount of football per game because they play both ways. We do our best to keep them healthy and enable to rest, but they were pretty tired after week one.”

Jackson also was very pleased with his defensive squad, which limited Hempstead to just 13 points in the season opener. Coming into the contest, Jackson was hoping his team would react and play hard and run to the ball as a team.

“Defensively, we did a good job of running to the football,” Jackson said. “We did a good job of getting 10-11 guys to the football every time. Obviously, there will be mistakes but because they ran so well to the football. We always had a bunch of guys around to make a play.”

As the team prepared for the opener, Jackson said the game plan offensively was to keep it simple and just rely on the talent on the team. Dickerson has been a standout during this time on the varsity squad for Brazos and last year saw time at quarterback.

“Offensively, we just kept it simple and execution lead to our success,” Jackson said.

While Dickerson led a rushing attack that rushed for 249 yards, the junior quarterback also hit on three-of-nine passes for 21 yards and one interception.

This week, Brazos will travel to Anahuac to take ontheBunaCougars.Buna opened their season with a 54-6 loss to Bridge City.

“They run the wing T offense,” Jackson said. “So they are very physical offensively and defensively when you play a wing T team it’s sort of like preparing for the option Most of the schools that we play run the spread offense, so our kids are used to running against that type of offense. When you throw a wing T type offence, it takes a little bit more preparation to get ready for them.

He knows coming into this Buna matchup, the defense will have to work on assignment football.

“The physicality of the game is going to be a key,” Jackson said. “Whoever can be more physical is going to win the game after watching two scrimmages and wanting their games. They are a very physical team. Our guys have a big task ahead of them, but I feel good about our opportunity and chances next week.”