Patrick Mahomes II and Brittany Matthews are high school sweethearts from Whitehouse who have both turned into record-setting collegiate athletes.
Mahomes, the starting quarterback at Texas Tech, earned Sports Illustrated All-America and All-Big 12 honors as a sophomore and comes into this week’s game against Oklahoma with 73 career touchdown passes and has thrown for 8,779 yards for the Red Raiders. He was on the cover of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football before the start of this season and has been in the Heisman trophy conversation. For the past four and half years though, Mahomes has found inspiration from Matthews and has had an eye on the success of the UT Tyler women’s soccer team.
“I am extremely proud of the level of play she has gotten to because all of it is from hard work,” said Mahomes of his Matthews. “Her competitive nature is one of the many things I love about her. She hates losing and wants to be the best. She works extremely hard to be great and it inspires me to work just as hard.”
Matthews has not received the media attention that her boyfriend has, but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming one of the most dangerous goal scorers in the nation. A senior forward, Matthews is currently second in the nation with 1.45 goals per game and 10th with 16 goals for the Patriots who are 9-2 this season and on a seven-game winning streak with a 33-2 scoring advantage in those wins. She has already recorded four three-goal performances this season which is a program record and has five game-winning goals, including a golden goal against Rhodes College. She is knocking on the door of some of the most prestigious program records at UT Tyler with her 29 career goals only three away from matching the all-time record of 32 and her 16 goals this season only one from the single-season record. She credits her teammates and coaches for her success, but also Mahomes who encourages her on a daily basis despite his pressures of being a high-profile athlete and living over 400 miles away.
“We feed off of each other,” Matthews said. “He’s an incredible leader and player and I’ve learned a lot from him. We give each other advice and he is always being positive with me to motivate me when I need it. I’m constantly letting him know that he’s not the only one breaking records. We’re having a great time with everything that is going on in our lives. He’s doing big things right now and so I am.”
Matthews and Mahomes both graduated from Whitehouse where they started dating along with dominating on the athletic fields. While Mahomes was gaining recruiting attention for football and being scouted for baseball, Matthews was contemplating whether she should even want to play at the next level despite being WHS Offensive MVP and a first-team all-district selection. She still had the passion for the sport, but also thought it may be time to move on. That’s when another kid from Whitehouse, Chestley Strother, stepped in and made the pitch for UT Tyler. Strother, who now plays professionally for the Houston Dash, graduated last year as the all-time assist leader in program history and was named an all-American after a stellar a senior year and career. Back four years ago, she gave UT Tyler coach Stefani Webb an off-the-field assist by getting Matthews to campus for a recruiting visit. The decision has paid off for everyone, including family which was been able to watch Matthews play for four years and Webb who seen Matthews develop into one of the top players in the nation.
“She is a natural goal-scorer,” Webb said. “She finds herself in the right position just about every time and I think her confidence is really soaring. We’ve played teams that man-to-man marked her and double-man marked her to try and limit her opportunities but she’s learned how to deal with that. She’s used to two, three or four bodies on her and now she’s starting to exploit that space and has great confidence about her.”
Mahomes left East Texas and found instant success on the field in 2014 with 16 touchdown passes in seven games with only four interceptions and put himself in the national spotlight last season with 36 touchdowns as a sophomore where he led the NCAA with 393 yards of total offense. He’s currently thrown for 21 touchdowns and is at 429 yards passing per game this year as a junior, including five-touchdown performances against Arizona State and Louisiana Tech. Matthews, on the other hand, has seen her role evolve throughout the past four years in Tyler from contributor to star. She scored only six goals in her first 36 games with four as a freshman and two in 2014 as a sophomore. She was not the primary scorer on the team last season as a junior when the team went 17-1-2, but would have a career year by recording seven goals and seven assists to show her offensive potential. This year as a senior has put her in record-breaking position and came with her changing her mentality and understanding what the team needed from her. No other UT Tyler player has ever recorded more than two hat tricks in a career, let alone a season. She has an absurd four hat tricks though the first 11 games of this season with three goals against McMurry, Sul Ross and two last week against Belhaven and Louisiana College. Before this year she had 13 career goals, all coming in 13 different games.
“I realized coming into this season after losing our top goal-scorers from last year that I could become that person for the team to rely on to score,” said Matthews, who plans on becoming a physical therapy assistant after graduation. “My teammates have been incredible with their passing to set me up for goals and it has just built my confidence even more. When your teammates are constantly setting you up for success there’s nothing else that’s on your mind besides finishing.”
Matthews and the Patriots have two games this week, starting with UT Dallas on Thursday and Howard Payne on Saturday in Brownwood. She’ll take the field with the mindset of helping the team win and with the opportunity to break season and career scoring records while her boyfriend will be playing against the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday night in a nationally televised game on Fox.
Mahomes will be expecting a text Saturday letting him know how many goals were scored and wishing him good luck. He’ll take the field in Lubbock with thousands cheering him on and with Matthews on a bus returning from the road trip. She’ll be following along at the edge of her seat on every play. He knows that, appreciates it and understands he wouldn’t be the quarterback or person he is today without Matthews.
“She has been supportive of me in whatever I do even before I played quarterback in high school,” Mahomes said. “She has been my No. 1 fan since the beginning. Her support means the world to me.”
Additional Quotes
Brittany Matthews on the UT Tyler Patriots season:
“We felt like we had something to prove this season after we graduated so many senior from last year’s team. There was some intimidation at the beginning of the year for me because I wasn’t sure how we were going to handle losing so many great players and having so many freshmen. It’s been an amazing year though with freshmen stepping up and players developing. Our confidence has grown a lot as the season has progressed and it’s only getting bigger. We are on a mission with something to prove.”
Brittany Matthews on the UT Tyler Patriots as a program:
“Our program’s culture instills in us to finish strong. Everyone expects the people next to them to come ready to work hard every day at practice. We expect each other to stay focused throughout every game and we expect to win knowing that our work ethic and preparation is going to help us reach our goals.”
