2004 Cedar Park Timberwolf Football

Game-by-Game Narratives
2004

PROLOGUE

The long journey that lead to the remarkable 2004 Timberwolf football season began on a drizzly Friday night in Waller, Texas, in November of 2001…

At about 9:45 pm that cloudy and cool night the Timberwolves were enjoying the fruits of an impressive 8-2 season in which they’d stormed to the school’s first district football championship. They’d gone through 17-4A unbeaten, clinching the title one week before the final game of the regular season with a 44-18 road win over Lampasas. It was LISD’s first district football championship ever, and it came in only the third year of Cedar Park football, just six months after graduating the school’s first senior class.

The season included a startlingly efficient blowout win over long-time state 4A power and district rival Belton on the road, and an impressive 44-6 scuttling of the state’s ninth-ranked team, San Marcos, for Homecoming. Their reward was the school’s first football playoff game, at the home of the Waller Bulldogs, just this side of Houston.

On that night of November 15, 2001, with 49 seconds on the clock and Cedar Park holding a ten-point lead, 38-28, the long prologue to the amazing 2004 run three years later actually began. The legendary Quinton Smith had put up his usual slew of numbers- over 200 yards rushing with three touchdowns. Linebacker Riley Iverson had picked off a screen pass and run 30 yards for a score. Quarterback Stephen Shaffer had expertly managed the efficient and effective offensive machine. Several freshmen football players were in the stands that night enjoying the game up to that point, completely unaware of their historic role far in the future of Timberwolf football, as the senior leaders of the 2004 team.

But that point with less than a minute left in the Waller game would stand as the high-water mark for Cedar Park football for almost three years. Unbeknownst to anyone at that moment, T’wolf gridiron fortunes were about to take an unfortunate downward spiral.

The tenacious Bulldogs had driven the ball down inside the ten, and from that point they rumbled over for a score to cut the margin to 38-34. A successful two-point conversion further cut the lead to 38-36. The ensuing onside kick floundered free and was covered by Waller at the Cedar Park 45. A run and three quick pass plays near the sideline mixed with some timeouts gained enough yards for the Bulldogs to bring on their field goal team for an unlikely 49-yard heave into a slight south wind. The kick was launched, struggled through the cold wind, fell onto the crossbar…and rolled over. The Waller stands exploded and Cedar Park fell 39-38. That promising 2001 season and Quinton Smith’s remarkable 4,445 yard, 57 touchdown high school career were over far too soon.

The slow slide that began with that heartbreaking playoff loss did have its bright moments. In fact, the very next season (2002) began with a nice 17-12 road win over a great Harker Heights team that would not lose again until the Regional Semifinals, finishing 12-2. A road win at Hays the next season (2003) over a Rebel team that would go 9-3 and end powerful Westlake’s national record district win streak was a great victory, as well. But such triumphs were few and far between. Two consecutive 3-7 seasons, despite the promising spurts here and there, mired the Timberwolves in football dormancy...

NEXT - Week One: Harker Heights
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