Nederland's Grogan heads team's effort to seize win at Ozen

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Nederland's Grogan heads team's effort to seize win at Ozen

By Tom Halliburton

The Port Arthur News

NEDERLAND -- Once Nederland finally seized a second-half lead, the Bulldogs turned their victory protection efforts over to Super Grogan.

Wareall Grogan played an OK game for his Nederland defense until about the final minute of last Friday night's third quarter. That's when the junior defensive end shifted into overdrive and reserved a room in the Panthers' backfield.

The Port Arthur News may want to make room for about four Mid-County defensive ends on its Super Team this Christmas. If you combine Grogan and Dravannti Johnson from Nederland with Clint Burnett and Zeke Schexnider from Port Neches-Groves, that's plenty of superior defensive end performers at the same spots.

No doubt it works the same way with Burnett and Schexnider, one good end merely helps the other one to be better, too. Everybody knows of Johnson -- the rangy University of Texas pledge usually on the left side at end.

Dravannti is a marked man. Opponents consistently try to run away from him. When Nederland grabbed its 17-14 advantage midway in the third quarter, Grogan realized that Lorenza Patterson, Corey Lewis and many of Ozen's major weapons intended to head in his direction.

That's cool with Wareall. He just tackled them, and tackled them, and tackled them.

Playing defense opposite of Dravannti is "a lot of fun" in Grogan's words.

Johnson has served as somewhat of Wareall's coach on the field. It's only helped the 16-year-old son of Theresa Grogan to raise the level of his game.

"We're real close," Grogan said of his relationship with Dravannti. "He helps me a lot. He will tell me the plays and all."

Dravannti did not exactly tell Wareall to take over the game in the last 13 minutes, but that amounted to Grogan's dominant role in Nederland's 31-14 victory.

If Dravannti could give Wareall some advice for this Friday's 22-4A home game against Little Cypress-Mauriceville, the senior probably would tell the junior to just "pick up where you left off last week."

"That's been my best game," the 5-11, 200-pound Grogan said. "Coming off a loss to Port Neches, I think we needed to get the momentum back."

By the time Nederland had notched its season's sixth victory, Grogan had a hand in 10 tackles, collecting nine solos, two for sacks and one caused fumble.

With about one minute left in last week's third quarter, Grogan truly began to earn Nederland's nomination for The News weekly player of the week honor.

Ozen trailed 17-14 but knocked on Nederland's goalline door, planning to regain the lead or at least tie the game. The Panthers' primary ball carrier, tailback Lorenza Patterson, got the call on third-and-goal from the Bulldogs' 5.