Ayden Ayers took second in the boys sprint pentathlon, and Cayla Jimenez placed third in the girls 1-meter diving event to lead the Bryan swimming and diving teams Saturday at the Cy-Fair Pentathlon at the Cy-Fair Natatorium. Bryan’s Hayden Moreno took sixth in the boys 1-meter diving event. K’Lee Rudd placed fifth and Selah Pilkington seventh in the girls sprint pentathlon, and Rachel Hutchinson finished seventh in the girls all-freestyle pentathlon....

Rudder’s Asani McGee had 11 kills and three blocks, and Hailey Pohl had eight assists, nine digs and two aces to help the Lady Rangers sweep Katy Paetow 25-11, 25-20, 25-10 in District 19-5A play Friday at The Armory. Kaylee Herd had 10 assists for Rudder (23-19, 3-6), while Gracie Menchaca had four aces and 10 digs, and Makenna Muth had four aces. Rudder’s JV improved to 10-15 with a 25-21, 25-20 sweep. Rudder’s freshmen (7-17) also won 25-22, 22-25, 25-14, and the Rudder freshman Green (15-8) won 25-11, 25-19....

The Cypress Lakes football team brought the most productive passing game in District 14-6A to Merrill Green Stadium on Friday. The Spartans didn’t hurt those numbers, but it was the running game that got them off on the right foot and played a huge part in a 62-10 victory over the Bryan Vikings. After averaging 30 passes a game, the Spartans (4-3, 3-2) threw only one pass in their first 16 plays and finished with 54 carries for 343 yards rushing. “We were [set up to defend the pass], and then they figured out what we were doing, and they changed some routes and made some big plays,” Bryan coach Ross Rogers said. Senior tailback Xavier Howard ran for 172 yards and four touchdowns on 21 carries. Howard gave Cy-Lakes a 6-0 lead with a 5-yard TD run to cap a 55-yard, six-play drive — all on the ground. Bryan (1-5, 0-4) cut the lead in half with a 22-yard Nico Bulhof field goal that capped a 14-play, 59-yard drive. The second Cy-Lakes touchdown came on Sofian Massoud’s second pass, a 50-yarder down the left sideline to a wide open Khaliq Abdul-Mateen, who ranks second in 14-6A with eight TD receptions. Massoud, a move-in from New York who is committed to Houston, completed only eight passes, 10 below his average, but he needed only 11 attempts and averaged 28 yards a completion. “[Massoud] is awful special,” Rogers said. “We had five secondary guys out tonight from the first of the year, so it was a tough night for us to face that kind of a passing attack.” Massoud gave Cy-Lakes a 20-3 lead with a 2-yard touchdown run. The Vikings responded, driving to the Cy-Lakes’ 27-yard line then appearing to reach the 1 on a 26-yard pass from Bulhof to Camden Gray, but the play was called back because of an illegal formation. Bryan eventually turned the ball over on downs, and less than 2 minutes later Massoud found Josh McMillan for a 19-yard TD pass. “It would have kept them off the field a little bit more, and we would have been a little more representative,” Rogers said of the Gray catch and a later touchdown run called back because of penalties. “They are a good football team with a lot of speed on defense on. We just needed to keep the ball a lot more than we did.” Bryan recovered an onside kick to open the second half, but officials ruled the Vikings touched the ball just before it went the necessary 10 yards. With the short field, the Spartans increased their lead to 34-3 on the first of Howard’s three second-half touchdown runs. Two of the TD runs capped drives that took at least eight plays — drives Massoud often kept alive with his scrambling ability. “Not only is he a great thrower downfield, he’s hard to tackle and he’s elusive,” Rogers said. “We saw it on the film all week long. Several of the plays he’d scramble and then he had the whole field open.” Massoud finished with 78 yards on 17 carries and avoided sacks all night. Bryan closed the gap after Howard’s first third-quarter TD run. On a fourth-and-2, the Vikings put in their goal-line set and ran Christian Richardson outside. The senior outraced the Spartan secondary down the Bryan sideline for a 67-yard touchdown run. Richardson finished with 101 yards rushing. The Vikings also got a sack from senior Caleb Merrell in the first half to force the Spartan’s only punt, and senior Cameron White and sophomore Nic Caraway stopped Howard for negative yardage on separate plays, but it wasn’t enough to ruin the senior’s night. The Vikings return to action on Thursday against Cypress Park at Cy-Fair FCU Stadium in Cypress....

The Bryan volleyball team lost to Bridgeland 20-25, 25-16, 25-19, 19-25, 15-6 in District 14-6A play at Viking Gym on Friday. Bryan’s Coco Gillett had 24 kills and 14 digs. Megan Vaughan had 38 assists and 10 digs. Rilee Cumpton had 16 digs, and Alex Smith and Amaia Jefferson each had 15. Faith Clark had 12 digs, and Heaven Dunn had six kills for the Lady Vikings (17-21, 6-5). Bridgeland won the JV match 25-22, 25-18 and the freshman match 25-15, 25-16. Bryan will continue district play at Cypress Lakes on Tuesday....

Rudder’s football team finally appeared to catch a break when Katy Paetow’s Damon Bankston muffed a kickoff near his own end zone late in the second quarter. It was a short reprieve as the junior running back scooped it up, brushed off three tackles and raced down the right sideline on a 91-yard kickoff return for a touchdown that put the Panthers up 34-14 en route to a 51-21 victory in a key District 10-5A Division II matchup Friday at Legacy Stadium. “When I dropped it, I was just thinking I had to make a play so [coach BJ Gotte] won’t get mad,” Bankston said. “When I hit the sideline, I broke that tackle. Next thing you know, I scored a touchdown.” Rudder’s football team finally appeared to catch a break when Katy Paetow’s Damon Bankston muffed a kickoff near his own end zone late in the second quarter. It was a short reprieve as the junior running back scooped it up, brushed off three tackles and raced down the right sideline on a 91-yard kickoff return for a touchdown that put the Panthers up 34-14 en route to a 51-21 victory in a key District 10-5A Division II matchup Friday at Legacy Stadium. “When I dropped it, I was just thinking I had to make a play so [coach BJ Gotte] won’t get mad,” Bankston said. “When I hit the sideline, I broke that tackle. Next thing you know, I scored a touchdown.” With Rudder struggling to defend the run, Paetow opened the second quarter with a 64-yard touchdown pass from CJ Dumas Jr. to Johnathan Baker, who broke wide open after Dumas Jr. faked a handoff. After a Rudder three-and-out, Paetow pounced again, moving 64 yards in eight plays, capped by a 6-yard touchdown run by Jolly to extend the lead to 27-7. Rudder appeared to get back in the game with a 6-yard touchdown run by Ezar on an option keeper late in the first half, but Bankston’s long kickoff return snuffed out any momentum for the Rangers. Rudder scored on its first drive of the second half, again on a short run from Ezar, to cut the lead to 34-21, and got the stop it needed, forcing a turnover on downs at the Ranger 22-yard line. But a sack and an incomplete pass stymied Rudder’s rally, and the Panthers reeled off 17 straight points to finish the game. Isaac Jimenez connected on a 29-yard field goal, and Kelley capped a five-minute drive with a 7-yard TD run to make it 44-21 with 5:03 left. Ezar churned out 64 rushing yards on 17 carries, mostly on keepers up the middle and completed 13 of 24 passes for 109 yards, but his fourth-down interception by Paetow’s Kentrell Webb with under four minutes left ended the Rangers’ last gasp chance at a comeback. Ezar left the game for one play after being shaken up on a sack by Agumba Otuonye, and the Rangers fumbled the ensuing snap, with Paetow’s DJ Mourning II recovering. Despite the loss, Rudder’s goal of making the playoffs for the first time in program history is still within reach, but the Rangers know the road became much more difficult. “We’ve got to go get Montgomery Lake Creek next week, then go get Cleveland, and now we’ve got to go knock off Huntsville. We’ve just got to refocus our goals,” Eric Ezar said....

Exactly one year ago Bryan offensive tackle Colby Fagan was told some news no one should have to hear, let alone a young athlete. “It was a scary, scary ride going out the first play of the game to being told you’ll never be able to walk again,” Fagan said. “That night around midnight, because I started not having any feeling, they told me I’d never be able to walk again, and if I was able to, I’d have to relearn how.” On the first snap from scrimmage against Cypress Lakes, on a play run to the other side of the field from Fagan, the then-junior went to the ground and was kneed in the back. The end result was a break of the L1, L2, L3 and L4 and a fracture of the L5 vertebrae. Fagan originally thought it was a stinger, and with the help of the trainers gingerly walked off the field. A few minutes later he asked if he could get back in the game, but when he was unable to perform a simple stretch was ordered back to the trainer’s table. That’s when he realized it was a much more serious injury than he first thought as he was unable to lift his leg onto the table. “From there I started losing feeling in my leg slowly and slowly,” Fagan said. “Once I told them I couldn’t feel my toes, they brought the Cypress trainer, a paramedic, and he came over and said that since it’s a back injury, don’t mess with it and said to take me straight to the hospital.” With his parents, Bryan High trainers and coaches Michael Woodward and Michael Gibson at Fagan’s side, he was given the prognosis of possibly not being able to walk again. “I cried. I lost it,” Fagan said. “I’ve grown up ranching and farming, and part of me was scared out of my mind. At the same time, I’m thinking I can work through it, and they told me I could learn to walk again. I was determined I was going to walk either way and then around 2 or 3 [in the morning] I started getting a little feeling in my toes, and they said this is a big upgrade and that they weren’t expecting this. They ended up saying the reason why I couldn’t move anything at first was because my body went into a self-protect mode and locked so that I wouldn’t move anything and mess it up any worse.” Fagan was moved from the hospital in Cypress to Houston Memorial Hospital that night so as to get special attention from back and nerve specialists, one of which had treated the Houston Texans’ JJ Watt. Fagan was later told that the only time they had seen an injury similar to his was to former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. Although Fagan was obviously lost to the team for the remainder of his junior season, he went in not long after returning to school and told Bryan coach Ross Rogers he wanted to play his senior season. “Once I was able to start walking Dr. [Kory] Gill told me there is a slight chance you could play next year, for me that’s all I needed to hear,” Fagan said. “Because we have a good coaching staff here and everyone is behind me like a big family, I wanted to come back and finish my senior year.” Wanting to play and playing are two different things. There was a long rehab ahead and there were other questions on whether he should play. Some of those questions were answered when he was fitted with a brace. “Because of his rehab we really didn’t know if he was going to play until about a week before football this year,” Rogers said. “We were looking for a replacement.” That thought process didn’t bother Fagan at all, even when it was obvious he was back to be a part of the team on the field. “I told my dad I don’t want to come back as starter, I want to work my way back, no special treatment,” Fagan said. “So coming back on second string felt best. When I got bumped back up it was, wow you came back from a back injury and told you would never walk again and now you’re back at starting and playing Friday night.” The 6-foot-5, 221-pounder isn’t just playing, but getting the job done. He said he had given up five or six sacks last season and therefore one of his goals after getting back on the field and finishing his senior season was to not allow his man to get to the quarterback once. So far, so good, on all of his ambitions. “He’s had to use a lot of grit and he’ had fun and he’s enjoyed it and I’m glad he is with us,” Rogers said. “He’s got good quickness for a tall man and he can get into the people and hook them, or get inside them, or cut them, just good quickness and his length helps him.” Fagan has had to overcome a lot of hurdles, not the least of which came last week when he returned to Cy-Fair FCU Stadium for the first time since the injury. “Last week, stepping on the field, it was scary because where we started the first drive off was one or two yards from where I got injured, so walking out to the same spot to play, I was scared out of my mind,” Fagan said. “Every scenario was going through my brain of ‘Do this, don’t do this, protect yourself.’ To be honest, first play I was so scared and iffy, when we snapped the ball, I almost froze up because it was a feeling of ‘Same spot, here we go, flashback.’” Fagan added that after the first play, it was a back to normal. On Friday, he will line up against the team against which the injury occurred. Including the Cy-Lakes game last season, Fagan started six games as a junior. He has started every game this season and, despite the Vikings’ 1-4 record, has never regretted his decision to return to football after such an injury. “People ask me ‘Why do you keep playing even when you’re told you can still reinjure yourself and with the season we’ve had?’” Fagan said. “And I tell them ‘We are a family through thick and thin. If we stay together we will get it done. We are one big family.’” • NOTES — Cy-Lakes’ Sofian Massoud is the leading passer in District 14-6A. He completes 60 percent of his passes and has thrown for 1,709 yards in six games. The senior is a transfer from the state of New Jersey and has committed to the University of Houston after decommitting from Rutgers. … The Spartans also have the district’s leading receiver and second leading rusher in seniors Khaliq Abdul-Mateen and Xavier Howard, respectively. Abdul Mateen has 40 receptions for an average of 13.7 yards and has caught seven of Massoud’s 12 touchdown passes. Howard has 590 yards rushing for an average of 5.3 yards per carry....