Teams come up with their own focal points, their own rally points, in their locker rooms – sometimes it’s born from a song, sometimes after a loss. Sometimes, it even comes from words said from another team.
We’ve got a suggestion, if the 2024 Kilgore College Rangers need a theme for their season, and it goes like this: “If you come at the king, you best not miss.”
The Rangers won the Southwest Junior College Football Conference championship last year (the last two years, frankly), avenged their only regular season conference loss in the title game by beating Navarro, and reached the NJCAA’s final four for the first time in program history.
Heck, the format, which is similar to the FCS’s College Football Playoff, has only been around a couple of years.
But you get the point: KC was the king of the Southwest. The Rangers did lose in the national semifinals to Iowa Western, but coach Willie Gooden and his team have re-loaded and are ready to go this fall.
And it starts in August, actually, with a home game at R.E. St. John Memorial Stadium against Monterrey Tech, from California. That’s a 7 p.m. game, as almost all the Rangers’ early-season games are every year.
KC takes a break early and then opens conference play at home, as well, against always-tough New Mexico Military Institute on Saturday, Sept. 14. That one is a 3 p.m. game.
The Rangers’ first road trip of the year has them heading to Corsciana to take on Navarro on Sept. 21, a 7 p.m. kickoff, and then they wrap up September with another home contest: Cisco, on Sept. 28.
KC steps out of conference play to host Community Christian College on Saturday, Oct. 5, a 3 p.m. kick – that will also be this year’s Hall of Fame Game, where Kilgore College will honor, at a banquet and introduce at halftime of the game, this year’s KC Athletics Hall of Fame inductees.
There’s an open date the following week, and the Rangers visit Trinity Valley in Athens on Oct. 19, a 3 p.m. kickoff.
And that brings us to the biggest change of the season this year. They’ll be only one meeting – at least, there’s only one scheduled – between Kilgore College and rival Tyler Junior College, and that’s the conference game between the teams on Saturday, Oct. 26, at CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Frances Rose Stadium, kicking off at 3 p.m. that day.
That’s happened before, but it’s rare. Traditionally, the two teams meet twice: normally a non-conference meeting the first or second week of the season, then a conference game late in the year, usually the final week of the regular season, at the site opposite of where the first meeting was.
That’s not the case this year, however, as only the one meeting is currently listed on the Rangers’ athletic website, kcrangernation.com.
And KC does play two regular season games after that: they’ll host Blinn College on Saturday, Nov. 2 at 3 p.m., then make the longest road trip of the season on Nov. 9 to Miami, Okla., to face Northeastern Oklahoma A&M (NEO), the early 1 p.m. kickoff.
It seems that all Gooden has done since taking the helm of the program for which he played and was also a longtime assistant – is win. And they’ve done it in all sorts of ways. Two seasons ago, KC got into the SWJCFC playoffs as the fourth seed and went on the road to win the entire thing, knocking off defending national champion New Mexico Military in Roswell to win the title, and this past year, the Rangers (9-2) earned the home field advantage throughout with the conference’s best regular season record (7-1 in conference play), and put a stranglehold on the rest of the field, beating Navarro, 48-39, to claim the championship.
KC was picked by the selection committee, along with Hutchinson (Kan.), Iowa Western, and East Mississippi Community College as the nation’s final four.
The Rangers had 24 players named to the All-SWJCFC Team, leading the conference with six first-team selections, five second-teamers and 13 honorable mention picks, and – oh, yeah – Gooden was named the conference’s coach of the year, shocker.
First-team selections were defensive lineman Derek Burns, linebackers Julian Payne and Vincent Paige, wide receiver Michael Phoenix and Aldyn Bradley, and offensive lineman Caleb Leonard. Second-team selections were quarterback Cameron Peters, wide receiver Zeek Freeman, defensive linemen Wilburn Smallwood and Kajuan Robinson, and defensive back Jaheim Patterson.
And honorable mentions were running back Kaden Meredith; wide receiver Chris Marshall; tight end Donavon Johnson; O-linemen William Boone, JaDarlon Key, Cam’Ron Lambert, and Austin Yeager; defensive linemen Kaden Kenney, Deveon Moses and August Salvati; long snapper Kiritapu Galeai; and kicker Chris Baldazo.
It won’t be long until we’ll turn our focus to who’s returning in 2024, who are the new faces, and what we can expect from your two-time defending conference champs. Kickoff will be here before you know it.
