ARLINGTON – You can forgive a large portion of the 28,160 fans at AT&T Stadium for thinking they were watching their favorite show on Saturday morning. They’ve seen this script, with these characters, on the big screen at Jerry World on repeat so much that they know the lines by heart.

Aledo has done this so many times now that the show might as well be in syndication. 

Saturday’s Class 5A Division I title fight was the Bearcats’ 11th state championship appearance in the last 14 seasons and the dominant performance in the 52-14 win over College Station resulted in the school’s 10th title in that span and 11th overall. 

This span of consistent results would make fans in Fargo jealous. The orange and black convoy down I-30 from Parker County may be even more predictable than North Dakota State’s nearly annual trips to Frisco.

The Bearcats rewarded their fans with a stellar opening act. Aledo scored in five plays on the opening drive of the game, forced a turnover, scored four plays later and cruised for the rest of the morning.

“Quick starts are a heck of a lot better than slow starts,” said Aledo head coach Tim Buchanan after claiming his eighth state title. “Especially against these guys. Our thought process was if we can get them down it will make things a little bit easier for us and it worked just like we thought.”

The stars’ performance also shone bright in 2022, as the victory was the most dominant and comprehensive of Aledo’s titles won by the newly self-proclaimed, “Eight-Time Timmy”. The 38-point margin was the Bearcats’ largest in a title game and their fourth state win by more than 30 points.

Quarterback Hauss Hejny starred on offense, completing 11-of-15 passes for 175 yards and two touchdowns, while also carrying the ball 10 times for 146 yards and touchdowns of 30 and 58 yards. Receiver Jalen Pope had a title game-record 228 receiving yards on eight catches, and his three touchdown catches tied the 5A championship game record. 

Defense and special set the offense up for success, creating short fields early. 

After Hejny’s touchdown scamper on the opening drive, the Bearcats got the ball back on a Dahvon Keys fumble recovery to instigate a 37-yard drive. Keys capped that drive with a three-yard score.

Four plays later, Jake Gillespie returned a punt 51 yards to the CS 15-yardline, and Keys punched it in soon after from one yard out. With just over eight minutes gone, the Bearcats were up 21-0, deflating a College Station crowd which was amped up for the morning kickoff. 

From there, a team that had started the season 0-2 and fought through tight games throughout the playoffs had a cushion and focused in on the goal of one state title, not 11.

“Every year it’s a new team. Everyone always says you’ve got to add on to the legacy, but I think a lot of people forget we also won for ourselves, we had to work for it too,” said senior defensive lineman Ansel Din-Mbuh. “It’s definitely not given. When you go back to last year when we lost to South Oak Cliff, people assumed we would win the game because we’d won before, but it’s not given at all. We had to work for this one and work really hard. We did the little things, which is why we’re here.”

The dominant victory put Buchanan in rarified air as one of five Texas high school football coaches with eight state championship rings, but he marked this one as special with a hard-working team.

“There’s no doubt, this one is extremely special because it’s the one we just won and the fact we had to work so hard to get here. The kids never quit, and the coaches never quit. These kids are a great group of young men. They’re going to be very successful in life because of the work ethic they’ve developed this year. Winning the football game is pretty neat, but the work ethic that they have developed is unbelievable.”

The 2022 Bearcats’ hard work resulted in quite a show for the huge crowd in black and orange, one that they will be sure to want to watch again and again.