{"id":13575,"date":"2025-10-21T08:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/13575\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T08:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:31:09","slug":"calallens-ian-perez-named-2025-game-changer-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/13575\/","title":{"rendered":"Calallen&#8217;s Ian Perez named 2025 Game Changer of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 If there&#8217;s one kicker teams should trust in South Texas it&#8217;s Calallen&#8217;s Ian Perez. The senior kicker drilled a 22 yard on field goad as time expired against district rival Tuloso-Midway to win 30-27. That&#8217;s why Perez is our week 8 Game Changer of the Week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a lot of mental stuff too. Kicking is 80 percent mental, 20 percent physical,&#8221; Perez said. &#8220;You know I know the coaches had all of the trust in me. If not they wouldn&#8217;t have put me in this situation in the first place,&#8221; Perez said. &#8220;I just told myself it was another ordinary kick. Same old thing, and just do what I&#8217;ve been trained to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Perez drilled the 22 yard game-winning field goal in the final seconds, giving Calallen the UIL 4A-DI District 16 lead. He made two other field goals from 29 yards out, plus three extra points.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My offense put me in that situation in the first place,&#8221; Perez said. &#8220;My snapper had a great snap, my holder had a great hold and I just had to finish off the job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 4-star kicker, rated by Kohl&#8217;s Showcase Camp, has made 8 field goals. That&#8217;s the second most in a single-season in Calallen history. Plus, the 5-foot-7 senior has broken all of the school&#8217;s game records and 4-of-5 career records.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What he does as a punter, what he does as our kickoff guy, can be able to spray the ball around the field and put it in different places,&#8221; said Calallen football head coach Charlie Reeve. &#8220;Some of that stuff doesn&#8217;t always shot up on the stat book, but it really is critical to what we do on special teams.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This year, Perez is going the distance by raising money to kick away childhood cancer. So far he&#8217;s raised over $1,500 and has scored 60 points through 8 games. You can donate by clicking <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alexslemonade.org\/2025\/kicking-away-cancer--with-ian-perez\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Someone in my family, I wasn&#8217;t born yet, I found out that they battled leukemia when they were 8. Beat it and then got it back when they were 10. Ended up passing away,&#8221; Perez said. &#8220;I know that really hurt my family, so I just wanted to do something to give back.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761035468_990_\" alt=\"Calallen's Ian Perez wears childhood cancer ribbon sticker\"  width=\"1280\" height=\"855\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Larissa Liska<\/p>\n<p>Perez&#8217; first passion was soccer. He began playing at 4-years-old.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never played football a day in my life until my freshman year, which was my first game playing actual football and being able to do what I do,&#8221; Perez said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just a really big blessing to be able to do this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Perez also works hard in the classroom. He has a 4.1 GPA.<\/p>\n<p>In week 9 of the Texas high school football season, Calallen travels down south to Zapata on Friday. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>IAN PEREZ&#8217;S CALALLEN RECORDS as of 10-17-2025<br \/>GAME<br \/>-Extra Point Attempt (1st):11<br \/>-Extra Point Made (1st): 11<br \/>-Field Goal Attempted (1st): 3<br \/>-Field Goal Made (1st): 3<br \/>-Total Points Scored Kick (1st): 13<br \/>SEASON<br \/>-Extra Point Made (8th): 55<br \/>-Field Goal Attempted (4th): 9<br \/>-Field Goal Made (2nd): 8<\/p>\n<p>   -Total Points Scored Kick (9th): 61<\/p>\n<p>CAREER<br \/>-Extra Point Attempt (1st):176<br \/>-Extra Point Made (1st): 171<\/p>\n<p>   -Field Goal Attempted (2nd): 18<\/p>\n<p>   -Field Goal Made (1st): 13<\/p>\n<p>   -Total Points Scored Kick (1st): 210<\/p>\n<p>Thank you to Thomas J. Henry for supporting Coastal Bend athletes.<\/p>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761035469_897_\" alt=\"Thomas J. Henry\"  width=\"1280\" height=\"853\"\/><\/p>\n<p>KRIS 6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 If there&#8217;s one kicker teams should trust in South Texas it&#8217;s Calallen&#8217;s Ian Perez.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3804,6440,6442,155,157,156,300,8986,11255,11256,8988,9196],"class_list":{"0":"post-13575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-3804","9":"tag-calallen","10":"tag-charlie-reeve","11":"tag-corpus-christi","12":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","13":"tag-corpus-christi-news","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-ian-perez","16":"tag-kicker","17":"tag-punter","18":"tag-tuloso-midway","19":"tag-wildcats"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}