Timpson football aims to repeat in first season without Terry Bussey

TIMPSON, Texas ( KETK ) – Fresh off last year’s 2A-D1 state football title, the Timpson Bears are adjusting to life without former standouts Tyler Lane, Vosky Howard, and Terry Bussey, the latter now an electrifying freshman at Texas A&M.

“Life without Terry and Ty and that senior group that went 56-3 we’ve been talking about that since January,” Timpson head football coach Patrick Gandy said. “A lot of guys that have had to step up in new roles. A lot of guys are playing out of position that…positions they played last year on JV so the kids are starting to figure it out and that the Friday night lights are a lot different than the Thursday night lights.”

Gandy has coached at Timpson since 2012 and recently took over the head coaching job after Kerry Therwanger retired in January.

He’s led the Bears to a 2-0 start to the 2024 season.

Gandy said the Bears’ latest win, a 50-48 triumph over fellow 2A power Lovelady, will make his guys better as they haven’t been in many close, competitive games over the last few years.

“They were going down and scoring and taking a lead. Well we had to go down and respond on offense. Well then they come back down and take the lead. And we gotta go respond so we were responding well. And our special teams got cleaned up a lot, I mean, a lot better than week one,” Gandy said.

Bussey’s cousin, senior JJ Garner, is a dynamic two-way player who Gandy said will be relied on heavily to lead the Bears.

“Except for probably this week you’re always gonna have the best guy on the field. We call him the X-factor for a reason so having a J.J. and then the kids who are just going hard around him makes a lot of things easy. That’s why we’re 2-0 now. And JJ’s had a lot to do with that,” Gandy said.

Garner tore his ACL in last year’s playoff game against Garrison at SFA forcing him to miss the state title game.

He’s extra motivated to lead the Bears back to Jerry World and go back-to-back.

“I actually got a goal to get there, yeah, actually determined,” Garner said.

Garner believes this year’s Timpson team can reach the mountain top once again.

“Definitely. As long as we keep working hard and working hard in the weight room, on and off the field, we definitely can make it,” Garner said.

Timpson (2-0) hosts Palestine Westwood (2-0) on Friday, September 13 in a week 3 non-district showdown. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. at John Herbert Eakin Stadium in Timpson.

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