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If the Palo Duro Dons wanted to send a message Thursday night at Dick Bivins Stadium, they delivered it with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. After waiting more than a decade to win another playoff game, the Dons didn’t just break the drought—they shattered it with a 56–7 dismantling of El Paso Hanks in a Class 5A Division II bi-district matchup.
Palo Duro entered the postseason riding nine straight wins and holding the District 2-5A Division II crown, but there was no hint of complacency. The Dons looked like a team fully aware of the moment, eager not only to win, but to dominate. And from the second quarter on, they did exactly that.
The night also carried a sense of poetic symmetry. Head coach Eric Mims—a proud Palo Duro alum—was back on the same field where he once played his home games. Five years into his tenure, after cutting his teeth as an assistant at powerhouse Duncanville, Mims has clearly built the kind of program locals hoped for: disciplined, dangerous, and fully bought in. This season, the best Palo Duro has enjoyed in more than 20 years, has become the validation of that work.
Things were briefly tense early. Hanks tied the game 7–7 on the first play of the second quarter, but that would be the Knights’ last moment of joy. What followed was a 35-point avalanche that turned a seemingly competitive matchup into a halftime rout.
Quarterback Julian Reese II was the architect of the surge. The junior has been on a steady upward climb all season, and Thursday he looked like a player in total command. Reese completed his first eight passes and finished the night 18-of-23 for 341 yards, distributing the ball to an impressive ten different receivers. Still, the highlight was the connection with big-play weapon Kyron Brown, who hauled in four passes for 112 yards and three touchdowns.
Reese wasted no time reclaiming the lead for good, hitting Brown for a 51-yard scoring strike just 96 seconds after the Hanks touchdown. From there, the Dons offense caught fire. Reese added two touchdown passes to Brown—covering 32 and 17 yards—and squeezed in a pair of 11-yard scores to Eric Mims Jr. before halftime. By the break, Palo Duro led 42–7 and had turned the game into a formality.
Meanwhile, the defense did its part, holding Hanks to just 202 total yards and offering no real openings after the early second-quarter score. It was the kind of complete performance championship-minded teams deliver in November.
The fun didn’t stop there for the Reese family. In the third quarter, freshman Jordan Reese entered at quarterback and promptly tossed a 10-yard touchdown to Daniel Moses. Jordan completed 4-of-5 passes for 56 yards, offering a tantalizing preview of the future and continuing a family lineage of quarterbacks that began with his father, former Amarillo Dusters signal-caller Julian Reese.
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