RATTLERS TAKE THE STATE CHAMPIONSHIP
The Navasota Rattlers completed a perfect 16-0 season with their second UIL State Football Championship in three years, with a 42-35 double overtime win over Argyle.
Navasota was facing its first loss of the year late in the fourth quarter, trailing 28-21, when Jerbrell Lipscomb intercepted an Argyle pass at the Eagles’ 39-yard line.
With less than a minute left, Rattler quarterback Shelton Eppler dove in from one yard out to knot the game at 28-28, sending it to overtime.
After an Eagle touchdown in the first OT, the Rattlers faced 4th and 10 and the end of their season, when Eppler hit record-breaking wide receiver Tren’Davian Dickson for 18-yards and a first down. Two plays later, the two would combine for a 3-yard score and send the game into a second overtime.
In the second OT, Eppler hit Dickson with their fourth touchdown hookup of the game.
On the Eagles’ ensuing possession, Christan Jones and Taylor Soto stopped running back Nick Ralston short on fourth-and-four, cinching the Rattlers’ sixteenth win of the season, and the 4A/Division I title, the third state championship in school history.
Dickson finished the game with 12 catches for 177 yards and four touchdowns. He was named the game’s Offensive Player of the Game. Dickson (who has committed to Baylor) finishes the year with 90 catches for 2166 yards and a single-season national record 39 touchdown receptions.
Meanwhile, Eppler would finish 30-of-54 for 493 yards and four touchdowns, bringing his season-total to 71 touchdown passes, breaking the National record of 68, set last year by Travis Quintanilla at Refugio.
The loss ends Argyle’s string of 31 straight wins.