ARLINGTON, Texas — 

Here’s some news and notes from the first full day of eleven-man games from the UIL State Football Championships:

Muenster 28, Shiner 0

• Muenster wins back-to back state titles with a dominant 28-0 win over Shiner in a rematch of the 2023 2A Division II state title game.
• Muenster’s defense in the playoffs allowed just eleven points per game, they pitched the first UIL State shutout since Anna’s 2023 win over Tyler Chapel Hill, the Hornets held Shiner held to 164 yards of offense.
• QB Casen Carney in his final game as a Hornet had a hand in all four Hornets touchdowns, throwing three touchdown passes to offensive MVP Garrett Hess and he ran for a touchdown.
• This is the final game in 2A-Division II for the next two seasons as both Muenster and Shiner are off to 2A-Division I next season as part of UIL Realignment.

Yoakum 45, Grandview 29

• Both teams were making their third UIL State appearance, Yoakum wins their first state title in school history, while Grandview who won titles in 2018 and 2019 falls in the title game for the first time in school history.
• SMU signee X’Zavier Barnett led a lethal rushing attack for the Bulldogs as he ran for 193 yards and five touchdowns, Jace Morales added 197 yards and a touchdown. Yoakum finished the night with 396 yards rushing.
• Grandview, who trailed 38-7 in the third quarter rallied to cut the lead to 38-21 as Brady Slinkard had back-to-back touchdown receptions, but Barnett’s final touchdown of the night just after the two-minute timeout sealed the Bulldogs title.
• Bo Robinson ends his family’s string of bad luck in state title games, his father Wendell Robinson in the 1950’s was part of two state title teams at Stamford, but the third title team at Stamford was stripped of their state title for UIL rules violations. Robinson would later become the head coach at Bremond where he coached his sons Bo and Ty in two state title games. Bo Robinson was part of a 1987 state runner-up squad at Bremond, in 1993 Ty played for a Bremond squad that also lost in the title game. Bo went on to become a head coach at Bangs where he also was state runner-up in 2002 and 2003, he then led Yoakum to the state title game in 2015 where they felt to Mineola. Ty also got into coaching and led Woodville to a title game appearance in 2024, where his team lost to Gunter. Finally, on Thursday night, the luck turned and Bo Robinson got that elusive title for the Robinson family.

Wall 25, Newton 24

• Wall raced out to a 25-7 halftime lead and held off a late Newton rally to win their first title in school history, while denying Newton of their sixth state title.
• Wall was led in the first half by their defense which did a stellar job of controlling Newton’s potent rushing attack, the Hawks got a blocked punt return for a score and an interception that was returned into the red zone to set up a score.
• Landon York who started his career at Wall as a flexbone quarterback ends his career as a spread QB where he threw two touchdown passes in the state title game.
• Newton junior running back Kendray Porter had a big game, rushing for 167 yards and he had 48 receiving yards and a touchdown.
• A Newton win would have made Drew Johnston and his late father, former Newton head coach WT Johnston just the fourth father/son duo to win a state title as a head coach, joining Chuck York and his sons Toby and Todd York, Jimmie and his son Dale Keeling along with Gary and his son Jeff Joseph.

Thus far, attendance at the state title games has been solid as spanning the first two days of action attendance is slightly up by 1,501 from 2024’s numbers. The largest crowd of Thursday was the Yoakum-Grandview game which had a crowd of 10,236.