A supernova of a championship game, a bunch of teams go perfect, and girl power

If you were looking for the most exciting moment in the short history of AT&T Stadium, you can forget the Dallas Cowboys.

You can even forget the upcoming concert by Taylor Swift. And I would never say that lightly.

No, Highland Park and Manvel might have just played the greatest high school football game ever. At least, a bunch of jaded, veteran football reporters tweeted that it was the best game they’d seen.

The phrase “early Christmas present” was tossed about freely. “We’re lucky to get paid to cover this sport in this state” was the judgment of the Austin American-Statesman’s Mike Craven.

And this was for the whole bowl of ramen — a state championship supernova.

It actually looked like a rather orderly, disciplined, and dare I say, dignified game at first, but much like yours truly, the game only got sloppier as it grew older.

In front of nearly 25,000 adrenaline-battered spectators, the Scots and the Mavericks traded sucker punches like Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago in the second half.

Highland Park trailed all game, just to grab the lead as the sand ran low on the strength of John Stephen Jones’ record-breaking passing performance in a state title game.

And then this happened. Get your heart medicine handy:

The final was HP 53, Manvel 49. To think we still have Aledo, Allen, College Station and Austin Westlake yet to play on Saturday!

▪  Manvel just missed being one of a slew of state champs to whom loss was but an abstract concept this season. Newton, Texarkana Pleasant Grove, Muenster, Gail Borden County and Strawn all went perfecto exactamundo this year.

Just to cap their games up real quick: Newton fell on Gunter, 40-16. Muenster put a scare into Tenaha, 27-20. Pleasant Grove got nasty against West Orange-Stark, 41-21. Gail Borden County blew away Jonesboro, 60-22. And Strawn (more on them below) made hay against Balmorhea, 78-42.

▪  Kennedale might have featured a two-headed monster in its rushing attack all season, but in the state title game on Friday, neither head was really on straight.

That’s not to say that their 252 yards on the ground in the 49-21 loss to Carthage was anything to sneer at. In fact, it was markedly better than Carthage’s 214.

But in the Wildcats’ state semis win over Stephenville, they shredded turf to the tune of 543 rushing yards. Against Kaufman the week before that, they gobbled up 438. This was definitely not up to their admittedly very high par.

▪  Lastly but not leastly, unless you’ve been avoiding the internet because you haven’t seen the new Star Wars yet, you know that itty-bitty Strawn School — with just 44 high school-age kids — made history with its six-man state championship win on Wednesday.

Feisty Strawn kicker K-Lani Nava most likely became the first-ever female football player to play in and win a state title tussle, as she booted nine of the Greyhounds’ points and took her bite of the championship medal.

This story was originally published December 23, 2017 at 12:24 AM with the headline "A supernova of a championship game, a bunch of teams go perfect, and girl power."