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Rylan Thomas of Lubbock-Cooper Liberty is the First United Bank Boys Athlete of the Week. [Chase Seabolt\/ Press Pass Sports]<\/p>\nRylan Thomas of Lubbock-Cooper Liberty is the First United Bank Boys Athlete of the Week. [Chase Seabolt\/ Press Pass Sports]<\/p>\n
On the field: The Lubbock-Cooper Liberty defense, especially the front four, are proving to be a force to be reckon with through the first two weeks of the season. Junior defensive end Thomas is one of those making his name and did so in a big way last Friday during the Patriots stunning 44-13 blowout win over Class 5A Division I Frenship in a first-ever meeting. Liberty had 11 total sacks in the victory with Thomas, the son of former University of Texas standout tight end David, getting through the offensive line to record a career-high seven sacks. Through the first two games, Thomas has tallied 10 total tackles including four quarterback hurries on top of his seven sack performance. <\/p>\n
Head coach Joe Sexton: The start of the season has been a lot of fun for us. Playing two Frenship school\u2019s to start the year wasn\u2019t easy. Memorial reminded me of us two years ago and they are going to be really good soon. Frenship always has a great tradition and we know how good of a program they are. Rylan is a guy that shows up to work everyday and just does his job. He doesn\u2019t talk a lot, but he leads by example and he\u2019s become a big-time player for us. Getting seven sacks in a game is something you rarely see. He was one of those guys we wanted to see step up this year and he is doing that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Thomas: \u201cI think we\u2019re off to a great start at 2-0. We have had two good wins and everyone is enjoying playing for one another. I also think everyone is doing their job and they are all being in the right spots. I feel I\u2019m working well on getting bigger and more physical. I have done a better job of getting off blocks and I just want to continue to improve.\u201d <\/p>\n
About Thomas <\/p>\n
Favorite band or musician:\u00a0Brandon Lake <\/p>\n
Favorite social media platform:\u00a0Instagram<\/p>\n
Favorite athlete:\u00a0Colin Simmons<\/p>\n
Bet you didn\u2019t know:\u00a0He loves to play NCAA 26. <\/p>\n
Parents:\u00a0David and Cassidy Thomas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rylan Thomas of Lubbock-Cooper Liberty is the First United Bank Boys Athlete of the Week. [Chase Seabolt\/ Press…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169],"class_list":["post-430807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430807","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=430807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}