Its Just Different in Texas

 Coach Koetting

I have spent the last few days in Dallas, TX attending the state high school football championships. In Class 3, my favorite team, the Canadian Wildcats, took to the ATT Cowboy Stadium field in search of their third state title in five years. It was a great game, but the Wildcats fell to a talented flock of Eagles from the east Texas town of Newton, 21-16.

There's high school football, and then there's Texas high school football. I attend as many Texas football events as a 600 mile round trip will oblige for. To appreciate the feeling of this carnival of town pride and dreams come true, you have to experience the atmosphere. The state championship weekend oozes with feel good moments. For me, it is a retreat to restore hope, to rejuvenate my spirit and to check my approaching old age cynicism.

Football is an American sport in a serious downward spiral, especially at the high school level. In terms of participants, attendance and community status; the numbers are a reality slap that the sport is sliding into second page news, but, not in Texas. Here, the sport is, always has been, and always will be a cultural gem of almost religious proportions.

 AT&T Stadium  Dallas

The rest of America’s football fans are envious of Texas. But, the image set in the glitter of the affluent suburbs of Dallas and Houston, renowned for their gridiron excess of 6 million dollar high school stadiums that seat 40,000, is not true Texas High School football.  

The player talent in these urban areas is for sure five-star, but the community grit is lacking. No, football in the Lone Star state belongs to the small burbs of the Panhandle, the Hill Country and the West Pecos, isolated lands with the magic Wild West feel of a Larry McMurtry novel. For three hours on game night the locals fall into a time warp where all that matters now is all that has mattered any fall Friday night over the last 75 years - get that damn ball into the other guy’s end zone. The predictability is comforting.  

 Canadian Stout Defense

The victors are enshrined in town lore, the losers move on. The legacy of Texas high school football is as much about the mass legions of losers as the few who become legends. Rural Texas has always been a hard life, bound and determined by a boom or bust attitude, endured in towns as gritty as the sand that kicks up in the wind. Life here is physical, seasonal and cyclical. To survive requires both a stoic view and a bounce back spirit – and the ability to problem solve. Those are the gridiron lessons that support so well the independent spirit of Texas.

Weather and oil dominate the local economy and both are a fickle mistress. The “bust” years are always looming, the “boom” years, fleeting. The Old Coach used to say, life is just like football: “Boys, you got to learn from your errors and move ahead. When you're down is when you've got to get up even faster.” Those words of wisdom are timeless advice- have been spoken to five generations of young Texas men by first a depression era cigarette smoking coach capped in a fedora to today’s coach, poured into body tight under-armor attire. The message never wavers.

 4th Qt. TD 21-16

Every Friday night across the vast landscape of Texas high school football, one half will drag bruised bodies and egos back to a quiet locker room where they strip off bloodied jerseys vowing redemption come next Friday night – until that day there are no more Friday nights, no more childhood. Next man up.