THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Permian High School Athletics

Before the first day of fall camp, Seth Ochoa — a senior quarterback — originally decided to forego his final high school season with the El Paso Eastwood football team. The Texas Tech baseball commit, who tore his ACL against Permian during his junior campaign, wanted to focus solely on baseball. Since the Troopers weren’t expecting to have Ochoa, sophomore Chris Castaneda took over the reins in the backfield. The 6-foot, 185-pound sophomore signal-caller has impressed El Paso Eastwood’s coaching staff. Castaneda is 49-of-70 passing for 674 yards with nine touchdowns and two interceptions in two games. “If you look at Chris’ stats, he has lit it up for seven quarters in a row,” El Paso Eastwood Julio Lopez said. “He’s making great decisions with the football.” After a 41-31 season opening loss to Midland Christian, Ochoa returned to the Troopers (1-1). Ochoa dressed for the team’s Week Two 67-21 victory over El Paso Bel Air, but didn’t play. In that win, Castaneda completed 23 of 32 passes for 285 yards and six touchdowns. Lopez explained that Castaneda and Ochoa would both see time under center as El Paso Eastwood hosts Permian (2-0) at 7:30 p.m. Friday for its homecoming game at Trooper Stadium. “We feel the same way about Seth as we did since we saw when (our coaching staff) first got on campus,” Lopez said. “We feel like he’s one of the best — at least in West Texas — throwing the ball. No matter who is in the game, we expect them to run our offense the same way. We expect them to move us and get first downs and keep the tempo up.” When looking at their opponent, the Troopers are preparing for many of the same faces. The Panthers return 17 of 22 starters that helped pick up a 56-34 victory against the Troopers in 2016. Christian Tschauner and Preston Ellison stretched Permian’s advantage late in the final two minutes with 50- and 85-yard interception returns for touchdowns. Lopez knows the Panthers have struggled keeping the ball off the turf with six fumbles in the first two games, but he said the Troopers can’t expect that continue to happen on Friday. “They are good. They are physical. They are fast,” Lopez said. “Defensively, they rally to the football. Anytime you play a good West Texas team like Permian, the biggest thing is you have to go into the game thinking that you are going to have to beat them. “I know they hurt themselves with turnovers in the last two games, but we can rely on that. We are going to be opportunistic and we are going to try to create turnovers and get them on their heels. We are going in with the mindset that we have to execute and not beat ourselves.” El Paso Eastwood opened the season with a shaky first quarter in which Midland Christian scored 21 unanswered points. Yet, over the next seven quarters, the Troopers have outscored their opponents 98-41. Lopez believes the team has put that tough 12-minute stretch in the past and has the hopes of continuing this strong stretch throughout the rest of the season. “We are in a good place right now,” Lopez said. “Out of the eight quarters that we played, we played a really bad first quarter — probably as bad as any coach would want to open a game at Midland Christian — but besides that quarter, we have played seven quarters of pretty solid football.”

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Permian High School Athletics

CASTANEDA, OCHOA EXPECTED TO SHARE TIME AT QUARTERBACK AS TROOPERS HOST PANTHERS

ROYAL MCGREGOR

Odessa American | 9/13/2017

PHOTO CREDIT: Jacob Ford