Cinderella season ends for Mansfield Summit against Denton Ryan in state semifinals

The clock finally struck midnight on the Mansfield Summit football team’s season.

The Cinderella Jaguars pulled to within a point of No. 1 Denton Ryan early in the fourth quarter, but the Raiders pulled away after that for a 49-35 win in a Class 5A Division 1 state semifinal Friday night at AT&T Stadium.

“They’re number one in the state for a reason. Our guys fought their tails off, but came up short. They fought until the end and I’m proud of them,” Summit coach Channon Hall said. “We have fighters at Summit. The leadership of our seniors left their legacy and left their mark. Underdog mentality and they relished in it.

“They proved a lot of people wrong and they deserve a lot of credit for what they did.”

Ryan (14-0), which has reached the semifinals the past five seasons, will face No. 4 Cedar Park (14-0) for the title next Friday at 7 p.m. back at AT&T Stadium.

Ryan will make its seventh appearance in the title game. The Raiders have won two state titles and were state runner-up last year after losing to Highland Park the previous three trips to the semifinals.

Summit (8-5), which finished as the fourth seed out of District 4-5A D1, struggled on offense most of the night and had three first-half turnovers, but still only trailed 21-13 at intermission.

Ryan opened the second half with a 6-play, 60-yard drive, capped by a 36-yard Seth Henigan (Memphis signee) to Jordyn Bailey scoring pass to up the lead to 28-13 with 10:13 left in the third quarter.

But Summit’s defense stepped up. The teams traded punts before the Jags stopped Ryan on downs at the Summit 21.

On the ensuing snap, Summit quarterback David Hopkins hit a wide open Hal Presley (Auburn) down the right hash mark with a 79-yard TD pass to cut the lead to 28-20 at the 1:28 mark of the third.

Hopkins finished 7 of 18 for 201 yards with Presley snagging three passes for 140 yards.

Following another Ryan punt, Hopkins scored on a 2-yard run with 10:09 left in the game to cut the lead to 28-27 and Summit’s dream season looked like it might continue.

“It was a great feeling, but we just had to finish the game. It was really tough up front for our offensive line against their defense,” Hopkins said.

Summit forced another punt by the Raiders and got the ball back, but Hopkins couldn’t connect on a third-and-12 pass from the Jaguars 12.

The punt snap on fourth down was high, causing a slight delay, and Ryan’s Michael Gee blocked the punt. Presley, who doubles as the punter, picked up the ball and almost completed a Hail Mary pass downfield, but the ball fell incomplete.

That’s when the wheels came off for Summit.

The Raiders ran a reverse pass from wide out Ja’Tavion Sanders (Texas) back to Henigan to take a 35-27 lead.

Two plays after the kickoff, Hopkins was hit as he threw and D.J. Arkansas (Rice) grabbed the ball out of the air for Ryan and raced 32 yards for another TD to put the Raiders up 42-27 with 6:10 left in the game.

The Raiders added another score with two minutes left.

Jalon Rock returned the kickoff 69 yards to the Ryan 1 and Hopkins ran it in from there with 1:43 left, but it was too little too late.

Ryan opened the scoring with 7:12 left in the first quarter on a 12-yard fumble return by Ty Marsh after Gee had swatted the ball loose. The Raiders went up 14-0 on a 1-yard TD run by Anthony Hill, Jr., but Summit rallied.

An onside kick by Ryan was returned 28 yards to the Ryan 23 by Jordan Riley. Two plays later Keon Hobbs darted up the middle for a 25-yard score to cut the lead to 14-7.

Summit’s other two first-half turnovers were wiped out by the Jags’ defense which forced punts, but Ryan did push the lead to 21-7 late in the half when Henigan hit Billy Bowman Jr. (Oklahoma) with a 6-yard scoring pass.

Henigan had 207 passing yards while completing 22 of 34 passes. Bowman had 14 catches for 134 yards to lead the Raiders.

The Jaguars got the ball back with 1:40 left in second quarter and Hopkins guided Summit on an 8-play, 63-yard march that ended with a 5-yard scoring run by Hopkins as time expired in the first half.

The Jaguars had reached heights never attained by a Summit football squad, but this night the slipper just didn’t quite fit.

“No one believed in us in the past so next year I’m going to come even harder than this. I’m going to build off of this,” Hopkins said.

Added Hall, “We never gave up. Our kids never wavered, we just needed a stop and a score and we got it. We thought that the tide was going to change a little bit, but we just shot ourselves in the foot. We knew we had to play a clean game and when you get things like that happen it throws off your rhythm and that’s what happened.”

This story was originally published January 9, 2021 at 12:54 AM.