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The Columbus Cardinals traveled to Needville to take on the Needville Blue Jays on Friday, Sept. 11, for the battle of the birds.
The Cards came away with a 48-21 victory and improved their record to 3-0 to start the 2026 season.
The Cards started the game by jumping out to a 7-0 lead early in the first quarter as the road team. Needville quickly responded with a touchdown of their own to tie the game up at 7-7 and carried that score into the second quarter.
In the second quarter, the Cards gave up on a touchdown on defense while their offense scored three touchdowns to carry a 28-14 lead into halftime. Coming out of halftime, the Cards scored one more touchdown in the third quarter to carry a 35-14 lead into the fourth quarter.
Then finally in the fourth, the Cards defense gave up one more touchdown while the Cards offense scored two more touchdowns.
While the defense gave up three touchdowns’ Cardinals head coach Matt Schobel was very pleased with his defense. They limited Needville’s high-flying offense to only 21 points and held them in check for the entire game.
“Their quarterback is a threeyear starter; their running back is a three-year starter, and they have been scoring a lot of points,” Schobel said. “Our defense made it hard for them though and I know our coaches would like to give up less points but that just because they are competitive, but our defense did a good job of making things hard for them.”
Offensively, the Cards were led by running back Doc Cantu, who carried the ball 26 times for 273 yards and scored all seven touchdowns for the Columbus Cardinals. Schobel said Cantu made some big-time runs for the Cards and credited his offensive line and tight ends for doing an excellent job blocking in the run game Friday night.
“First and foremost, our offensive line and our tight ends did a great job in the run game,” Schobel said. “Doc made a lot of big runs for us and made some tough runs where we did not have it blocked right. He ran really hard for us tonight, so I am proud of him, proud of our offense and proud of our whole team.”
Looking ahead to next week, Schobel said there is one thing that they will prioritize in practice moving forward, and it will not matter who the opponent is.
“Preparation, we are playing Bellville next week who is a tough opponent, but it is going to be about our preparation, does not matter who we are playing,” Schobel said. “Trying to get to a level of play that we need to get to.”
The Cards will return to the nest on Friday, Sept. 18, where they will face the Bellville Brahmas at Memorial Stadium in Columbus with kickoff set of 7 p.m.
