Cougar14.2

Why is Arlington Martin not a great example? If I was moving to the area and got a job in downtown Fort Worth then Martin would be closer to work than Aledo would be. Everman or Brewer would never be options if I was looking for an upper tier program to put my kid in.

That's not what's going on at Aledo though. There are certain parents showing up in Aledo who probably couldn't "afford" to live there if their son didn't have D1 talent. No you wouldn't choose an HISD school in the hood over Katy. The question is would you buy a house in Katy High, Cinco Ranch, Tompkins, Taylor or Paetow's zone? Why wouldn't you buy the house in North Shore where he would play against better competition in practice and play in the highest classification in the playoffs? Obviously the best player's parents in Katy ISD this year chose Tompkins. Katy High has also had issues in the past with incoming transfers and player eligibility. People move to Katy's district all the time for football but you've never been able to look at Katy's football team and said it doesn't reflect the enrollment on the school. Yes, if you build it they will come. The question with Aledo is how do they get there?

You're glossing over a lot of factors to make that comment. First of all nobody really "looks around the state" for quality programs to put their kids in. They look at an area with a reasonable commute to their job plus affordable housing and go from there. There would never be a choice between Aledo or PNG. The choice would be between Aledo and a school like Arlington Martin. If I had a kid that was a big time prospect I would choose Martin because he would play against stiffer competition ultimately making him better and definitely get more looks due to what's around him and who he's lining up across from. I can't name one player from Aledo besides Wes Harris that's actually lived up to his star rating coming out of high school, I can point to Myles Garrett and several other coming out of Martin though. If what you said was true then there would be 100s of black kids at Aledo because of parents thinking their kids are good athletes and have a chance for a state title or a scholarship. 100s of parents would be putting themselves in a bind to purchase one of those $500k houses so their kid could play in the program. That's far from the case though. They just have this small, highly elite fraction that just so happen to make that decision? Those parents are much more likely to move to Mansfield, Arlington, Grand Prairie, Euless, etc. which would give their kids the same, if not better chances for a scholarship. You can apply your "build it and they will come" theory to Lake Travis, Austin Westlake and Southlake Carroll and all of their recruiting numbers would hold though. I'm not saying Aledo is recruiting but there's definitely something head scratching about why their college recruiting numbers don't look similar to the three power house programs I just named who also have very comparable demographics.

Undoubtedly whatever they do is legal but it's definitely the biggest anomaly in high school football. Only 2% of Aledo's high school population is black yet over 80% of their D1 football recruits are? It's hard to imagine Aledo having a higher hit rate on top talent than a North Shore, Westfield, Duncanville or Allen. How do you hit basically back to back on two 5 star running backs with probably 1% or that 2%(17-25) kids being male? Why don't they hit on that same level with the 1% of the girls? I guess the answer is the small percentage of minorities that attend Aledo pass up other good schools in the DFW where they would receive the same scholarship offers to come way out west so they can potentially have their kids auctioned off?

Man Cal, with today's climate I was just going to leave that one alone. But since you wen there . . . maybe we can pass the collection plate around town and try to come up with a big enough bid for that 5 star freshman they have with the SEC offers?

Yep, that's the reason I was so vexed after the PNG vs FB Marshall playoff game in 2018 where after they got crop-dusted one of the PNG fans commented something to the effect that "FBM shouldn't be able to move on due to not even having 100 people in the stands for a playoff game." You have opposing fans butt-hurt about things like fan support while the FBM players are making arrangements to attend their teammate's funeral between playoff games. Kids should be commended for overcoming their environmental challenges: [Hidden Content]

Didn't want to start a whole thread but I figured I'd post this here since PAM plays Lancaster next year. As many of you know, over the years I've been an ardent defender of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds being marginalized on this site and am also a huge advocate of high school football being an avenue to mitigate kids' situations that will often end up in them becoming a statistic that's so frequently highlighted in the political forum. SW Dallas County is known for schools like Desoto, Cedar Hill, Duncanville, etc. producing high school state champions in multiple sports but it's also one of the roughest areas in the state. See neighboring Oak Cliff for example. Unfortunately a kid from that area with his whole life in front of him became one of those statistics and never got to take advantage of his opportunity: [Hidden Content]

IDK man? It's not uncommon to see Lancaster three or four deep in the playoffs. You also have to consider the level of competition they're up there playing. I mean, they're up there losing to Lone Star, Highland Park and Denton Ryan in the playoffs. That's after playing heavyweight 6As like Duncanville and Euless Trinity in non-district play. I would liken them to a bigger and faster version of Manvel. If they got to play in region 3 they probably would've played for three or four state championships over the last decade. DFW is just on a different level.

Yeah, the guy that left wasn't elite at all. Only had a career .885 win percentage in over a decade on the sideline vs Morris' .806 win percentage before he went to the college ranks. I guess Westeberg would've never been elite if he didn't coach at Allen first since he has a .690 win percentage at Barbers Hill comprised of one district championship, three third place finishes and a fifth place finish? If he didn't have the rings they would've run him out of town like they did Don Price who had a stretch of 5 undefeated regular seasons in an 8 years stretch before the elite Ronnie Gage showed up with his two rings got run off even quicker.

If history is any indicator he won't. Did stay at Stephenville for 5 years but I'd imagine since he's back in the high school ranks that when Randy Allen finally leaves Highland Park then Morris leaves Allen too?

PNG players look like they need a better strength and condition program. The vast majority of PNG’s players look like BH’s used to before TW got there. Santa Fe has an excuse as they have the smallest enrollment in the district so you expect some personnel deficiencies, same can’t be said for PNG though. Other than a few linemen PNG’s players look like they’ve gotten smaller over the last 6 or 7 years, but that may just be optics as other team’s enrollments have grown?

There is a big difference between being an AD and an AC which is what GCCISD has at their campuses. An AD runs the entire show and has an administrative title. An AC is just pretty much a coach and has limited decision making power on campus. You can listen to Eric Peevy’s interview and how he describes “just being a football coach” at Westbrook(AC) vs being the AD/HFC at LCM where he can oversee “all sports”. Same reason Westeberg left Allen to be an AD at Barbers Hill. So no, you really can’t parse words there. Along with GCCISD paying the lowest in the surrounding area it’s part of the reason they don’t get good football coaches.

They probably ran Gambill off for the same reason Southlake Carroll ran off Hal Wasson, even though Gambill actually won a title. The expectations at the top programs in the DFW are completely different than than the top programs everywhere else in the state except for MAYBE Katy. That’s all speculation and Gambill just probably did decide to hang it up. What’s more interesting is that the Allen AD also retired today. I truly believe Westeberg never leaves Allen if Barbers Hill couldn’t have given him a $30k raise and an AD title. Gambill was making around $125k when retired, Westeberg is probably making over $160k at BH right now? Per The Chronicle TW was over $154k in 2019. Just saw him post BH’s offensive coordinator job with 10+ years experience starting a shade under $100k If Allen decides/d to combine those positions no reason they couldn’t hand pretty much hand pick any coach in the state and give him $175k+ if they choose. District just may be too big for an AD/HFC combination? When you start looking around the state and seeing what other districts are investing to try to win football games its pretty eye-opening. SETX is lucky they have the talent they do.

I think it’s a good time for Crosby and Carthage to catch each other. Both teams just lost some important kids that played a bunch of football for their respective teams, especially in the offensive side of the football. It’s not a large sample as the current staff has only been here a couple years but Crosby has started slow both of those. I fully expect Carthage to take advantage of that. May be a two class difference but I would think y’all are the betting favorite entering the season.

Looks like we’ve had a couple of decent looking transfers come in from what I can tell at the track meets this past week. They’re youngsters though so no telling what they’ll end up contributing. What I will say is that coach Prieto us some very good looking athletes to work with the next 2/3 years. Still waiting to see what shows up this summer though.

I think some of his issue is that he’s an extremely good high school player but it’s hard to really project a position for him at the next level? He’s a little too small to be a true 4-3 DT and doesn’t really fit any of the D-line positions in a 3-4. Not sure from the standpoint of pure athleticism if he can effectively play OLB in a 3-4 either? If he doesn’t get FBS offers he’ll be a steal for an FCS program for sure. I think you saw a little bit of this with Michael Ray this year from the safety/OLB positions.

Coming into 5A-D2 region 3 for next years it’s Fort Bend Marshall and then wide open for anybody else. I think you’re going to see a significant drop off from Huntsville with the Bobino brothers graduating, that Hornet D-line was the main reason for their success in recent years. I think you always have to throw A&M Con. in the mix as long as Fedora is there but I would take their district mate Montgomery as a squad that could make a serious run with what they have returning. Crosby is going to have a bunch of talent but they’ll be young and may take half the season before they actually get going. Who knows though, maybe the extra six weeks of practice last year expedites the process? I expect FBM to be ridiculous good with the new kid they’re going to start at qb next year.

Somebody forgot to tell the football players the season was over. Boys out there still knocking off state ranked opponents.

Per the coach’s poll Crosby puts six players on the all-state first team: [Hidden Content]

Y’all ain’t faster than Crosby and Aledo is faster than us. Their 4star safety BJ Allen(LSU commit) ran down Devon Achane(fastest player in Texas at the time) as a sophomore in the state championship game which is pretty impressive. What’s even more impressive is that his younger brother is a ‘24 kid who’s also stupid fast and just picked up his first SEC offer from LSU too. You can’t tell me Demarco Robert’s wasn’t the fastest player on the team though. They’re who they are because issues like speed affect their gameplan less than everyone else’s. You have to beat them at the line of scrimmage, otherwise they play that old school Tampa 2 defense that is very tough to deal with at the high school level with four FBS players in the secondary on a consistent basis. Not to mention the disguise and execution are flawless. Of course things change from year to year and in one game anything can happen but on average I think Aledo gets Carthage 8 out of 10 times the way things are currently constructed. Should have a better feel for it in late August though. Once again, shout out to Coach Jerry Prieto and the Crosby coaching staff. Assuming the schedules hold from their originals in 2020 he will have had Crosby on the field Aledo and Carthage, who have 18 state titles between them, in the same calendar year. Crosby stays 5A-D2 the next three years I think we get another shot at one.

I don’t think Olin did anything different than he did for Stoerner, Alfred or Tate. Brian transferred because when Crosby hired Haynes he brought his some Kellen who Brian couldn’t beat out at the time. If Brian hadn’t gotten moved up his freshman year then I think he stays at Crosby and sits behind Haynes. Kellen went on to throw for over 4K yards in just 12 games that year and Brian transferred to Lee and sat behind Drew Tate until he could start his senior year. Hated to lose a kid like that who would’ve been a solid contributor to the program.

Yeah, specifically talking about Aledo and Crosby it wouldn’t have mattered either.

Wouldn’t matter when you switched them. That’s why I brought up the Denton Ryan vs Cedar Park example. You could’ve switched coaches at any of the times you mentioned above and DR still would’ve crushed CP. Same story with Highland Park who Ryan crushed earlier in the playoffs.

Nobody is winning titles without overall talent near the top of your classification. Nowhere was that more apparent in the title games than Cedar Park vs Denton Ryan. State title winning coach with his best team ever gets destroyed by just a way more talented DR team. Crosby was talented enough across the board to make it to the title game. Aledo had multiple SEC kids on the team along with several other D1 recruits. Probably 11 total. We could’ve switched coaches and we would’ve still gotten stomped. Yeah, the coaching is great but out of a 2% black population at their school the fact that 40% percent of them end up as D1 recruits is what has their program where it is. To further expand upon that look at Barbers Hill. They have a head coach with multiple state titles, the necessary funding and still struggle to finish above third place in district play because of their talent. Same story can be said for TW’s predecessor who showed up at BH with two 5A/6A titles and got run off/retired. Weird how all the elite coaches coach at places with either elite money or elite talent.

We sure do appreciate it too. Do y’all have anything else in GCCISD we can bring up from the farm league? Looking for a couple of linemen and a receiver for next year.