After a close first half that had them trailing 16-12, No. 5 Waco La Vega stormed back in the second half, defeating No. 4 Midlothian Heritage 45-18 in a statement win. 

La Vega utilized their strong running attack, racking up 439 yards to pull away from the Jaguars in the second half. Running back John Richards led the way for the Pirates, tallying 183 yards and two touchdowns on just 11 carries. The Pirates leaned heavily on their run game, which they have done all season, and finished the game employing 50 running plays and 10 pass plays. 

"We've been able to run the ball all year, that's what we do," La Vega head coach Don Hyde said. "We try to run the ball and then hit you every now and then over the top." 

The Pirate defense was catalyzed by the offense’s efforts by creating six turnovers. The Pirate defense was stout and suffocated the usually potent Heritage offense that came into the game averaging 34.5 points per game.  

“Our defense was great, especially in the second half,” Hyde said. “They helped us to be able to dominate the turnover battle. We made some adjustments at halftime and they came out here and executed." 

The win lifts the Pirates to (3-2) with their only two losses coming to No. 1 Argyle and 5A Austin LBJ by a combined four points. 

“What people don’t understand is that we’re probably three plays away from being (5-0),” Hyde said. “We’re young but we’re a good football team and we’re only going to get better.” 

Hyde says that the young squad can go as far as their work ethic takes them since they have already shown they can compete with the area’s best. 

"The ceiling for this team is anything they want it to be, in order to be great you've got to practice great every single day. We're just young, we make mistakes.”

It was a tale of two halves on Friday night for Heritage, who started the game looking phenomenal but made some costly mistakes after the intermission, which ultimately cost them the game. 

“La Vega is a wonderful football team,” Heritage head coach Lee Wiginton said. “When you play a wonderful football team you better come out ready to play wonderful football and we didn’t.” 

The ultimate hindrance for Heritage was their offensive struggles and inability to march the ball down the field. The Jaguars were only able to accumulate 206 total yards of offense and 11 first downs. 

The Pirates defense gave Heritage quarterback Landon Ledbetter fits throughout the night, and the usually accurate quarterback was intercepted three times. Wiginton said that the Jaguars inability to move the chains, in turn, weighed down the defense and led to the Pirates extending their lead. 

“Offensively we struggled tonight. We couldn’t stay on the field for very long which put the defense in a huge bind,” Wiginton said. “When the defense gets tired against an offense that powerful, it makes it that much harder to stop them.” 

Heritage dropped their first game of the season in their last game of their pre-district schedule on Friday night. The Jaguars will now have a bye before entering District 9-4A play with a (4-1) record in week 7 against Quinlan Ford. 

“I think that we played a great non-district schedule,” Wiginton said. “I really love the schedule that we’ve been through. We’re battle-tested, we’ve seen a lot of really good football teams.” 

Wiginton says that he feels like the loss will come as a learning experience for the Jaguars who will likely have a long season ahead of them as a deep playoff contender. 

“Just like anything in life, sometimes you get a whole lot better after something like this. We’re sad, we’re disappointed. We want to win them all but there are not that many people that can do that. We’ll grow and learn from this, it would be a dream of ours to get to see them again someday.”