Still hungry: McAllen stays perfect, blanks Palmview 55-0

McALLEN — Seven games into the season, McAllen High has yet to lose.

Four times, its defense has pitched a shutout, marking McAllen’s first season with at least four shutouts since 1979.

The Bulldogs continued their unbeaten run Friday night, overwhelming Palmview 55-0 at McAllen Veterans Memorial Stadium behind six touchdown passes from junior quarterback Luke Laurel, five touchdown receptions from senior Joaquin Alvarez and another dominant performance from a defense that has become one of the defining pieces of McAllen’s season.

McAllen improved to 7-0 overall and 4-0 in District 16-5A Division I, remaining alone atop the district standings. Palmview dropped to 3-4 overall and 2-2 in district.

For senior linebacker Hayden Helgeson, the formula behind the Bulldogs’ defensive success is not complicated.

“It comes from practice,” Helgeson said. “It comes from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We grind all week during practice. Every single day of practice was physical. All of our guys were working. We were working against the offense, the offense was working against us. It really just takes practice. That’s where it all comes from.”

Palmview learned that quickly. McAllen scored touchdowns on each of its first three possessions, jumping ahead 21-0 before the end of the first quarter.

Laurel opened the scoring with a touchdown pass to Alvarez, then found him again on a crossing route for another score. Sophomore running back Cole Morley followed with a 56-yard touchdown run to make it 21-0.

The Bulldogs continued pulling away in the second quarter.

Morley scored again from 28 yards out, Laurel connected with Alberto Aleman for another touchdown and Alvarez completed a first-half hat trick with a 32-yard scoring reception shortly before halftime.

McAllen went into the locker room ahead 42-0.

While the offense piled up points, Palmview struggled to find room against a defense that entered the game allowing just over six points per contest.

Helgeson was again in the middle of it.

The senior entered Friday as McAllen’s leading tackler and sack leader, and he combined with Stafford Ybarra for a sack early in the second quarter after shedding pressure and closing quickly on Palmview quarterback Edgar Villalpando.

Helgeson described the McAllen program as one where teammates hold each other accountable and celebrate each other’s success.

“It’s a player-led program,” he said. “The players are so happy for each other. If they scheme for some players and other players get tackles, people are happy. On offense, Joaquin got five touchdowns, everybody’s happy for him.”

Head coach Patrick Shelby sees the same thing.

Shelby has watched much of the current senior class develop together since middle school, a group that was still in eighth grade when McAllen made its playoff run in 2022.

“These guys, they work extremely hard for each other,” Shelby said. “I attribute it back to the culture and climate that we have here with this football team. It hasn’t been easy. It’s been years in the making, but this group has been together since the seventh grade, and they just continue to work for each other every opportunity that they have.”

Shelby said the culture has increasingly moved from something coaches teach to something the players reinforce themselves.

“Us as coaches can only do so much,” Shelby said. “We’ve got to teach them the culture and teach them how to be leaders, but at the end of the day, kids are going to listen to their peers a whole lot more.”

That has helped create a team where big individual nights have not come at the expense of the larger goal.

Alvarez provided the biggest offensive example Friday.

After catching three touchdown passes in the first half, the senior added two more in the third quarter, including a 26-yard score for his fifth touchdown of the night.

Laurel finished with six touchdown passes — five to Alvarez and one to Aleman — while Morley scored twice on the ground.

McAllen led 55-0 by the end of the third quarter and turned the game over to its reserves.

Palmview still had opportunities to break the shutout late.

The Lobos drove inside McAllen’s 10-yard line in the closing minutes and eventually faced fourth-and-goal from the 4. The Bulldogs’ defense held again, forcing an incompletion and preserving the shutout.

Helgeson’s role in that defense came through a path he did not originally expect.

He began his high school career at quarterback before tearing his ACL during his first freshman scrimmage.

“My freshman year, I was a quarterback,” Helgeson said. “In my first freshman scrimmage, I tore my ACL. I got horse-collared really bad.”

Unable to participate fully during the following spring, Helgeson used the time to learn his new position.

“That was a huge learning period for me,” he said. “Coming into my sophomore year, it was nice having some time to learn. My junior and senior year, I really just started taking off.”

Now a senior linebacker, Helgeson said his time at quarterback has helped him understand what opposing offenses are trying to do.

“My grandpa always tells me that if you play two positions, you know twice as much,” Helgeson said. “Sometimes it’s an advantage. Sometimes you know where they want to throw, you get some of the tendencies.”

That preparation starts well before Friday.

“We get an hour of film every single day,” Helgeson said. “That’s where we start communicating. We catch on to tendencies.”

McAllen has now won 11 consecutive regular-season games dating back to last season and remains in control of the District 16-5A Division I race.

Still, neither Shelby nor his players are treating 7-0 as the finish line.

“We’re not satisfied yet,” Helgeson said. “We’re not satisfied until we go undefeated. And even then, we’re going to keep going into the playoffs.”

Shelby has tried to keep the focus narrower.

“We always talk about a 1-0 mentality every single week so we can stay focused on the mission and the task at hand,” Shelby said. “The message this week was just continue to stay hungry. Don’t be satisfied with what we’ve done so far because there is a goal that they want to reach at the end of the season.”

McAllen travels to face PSJA Memorial at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, its next step toward that goal.

“We can see it, but we aren’t there yet,” Shelby said. “We’ve still got to continue to keep working, continue to keep getting better every single day.”