Wide-Open Offenses follow PA Coach

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Wide-open offenses follow PA coach

There are nearly 56,000 students in the Garland school district, east of Dallas, and about 16,000 of them are high schoolers. They attend seven different Class 5A high schools and it seems like all the good football players wind up at Garland High.

"You can live anywhere in Garland and go to school any place," veteran GISD athletic director Homer Johnson says of the district's open admission policy.

"That makes it kind of hard on people who don't coach at Garland High."

Ronnie Thompson, Port Arthur Memorial's newly named head coach and athletic director, coached at South Garland High School for 14 years, nine as head coach.

Thompson, 83-72-3 in 16 seasons as a high school head coach, was 41-50-1 at South Garland from 1993 to 2001. That included two 2-8 seasons, two 4-6 seasons and three that ended 5-5. In 1996 and 1997, South Garland made the playoffs, going 6-4-1 and 8-3.

Johnson, who was Garland High football coach 50 years ago when that was the city's only high school, thinks Thompson did a good job at South Garland.

"Ronnie was really a good coach, a great offensive coach. I know the other coaches around here hated to play him, because he used entirely a different type of offense than anybody they played," Johnson said.

"You've really got yourself a good coach. No question, you've hired a good guy."

Thompson's whiz-bang offense first took the Golden Triangle, then the state of Texas by storm in TJ's 1980-81 heyday. It had the same effect in Northeast Texas in the 1990s.

"People in Port Arthur don't understand that when he came to the Dallas area to coach, his influence on the passing game in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was just unbelievable," said Todd Dodge, the Thompson protege who has racked of a record of 63-1 and three state championships the past four years at Southlake Carroll.

"You can't turn three degrees and not find someone who hasn't been affected by him. I can go on and on about people who are running an offense derived from what Ronnie was doing.

"He's been very influential to what's going on today in the Dallas area. And, somewhat, all over the state of Texas."

Garland's open admission policy allows students going into their ninth-grade year to choose their high school, so there's no such thing as a feeder system prepping the players for high schools programs there.

"At South Garland, most of kids didn't even play football in junior high, but they picked the offense right up," Thompson said. "It was a lot of fun to prepare."

Dodge knows the thrill.

"I've put my own wrinkle on things with the no-huddle and all that kind of stuff," he says. "But still, in the way we do things, there's a lot of Port Arthur, a lot of Ronnie Thompson fingerprints on the things we do today."