December 20, 2021
Feartured Image Photograph by Arturo Olmos.
I spent the 2021 season following the Westlake Chaparrals, the top high school football team in Texas, and their coach Todd Dodge for a feature in Texas Monthly (LINK TO THAT PAGE). Following publication, the Chaps made it to the state title game. I joined the Chaps on their trip to AT&T Stadium for the title game in this follow up piece.
Here’s an excerpt:
The myth of Texas high school football is that it turns small towns into big cities—that for one night of the week, the Friday night lights shine as brightly on rural Texas football fields as they do on any red carpet in Hollywood. But the truth, at least in 6A ball, the division with the largest schools, is that the sport is dominated by teams near cities. Westlake is a fifteen-minute drive from downtown Austin, and Guyer sits squarely in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. Even the famed Permian Panthers couldn’t make it out of the second round of this year’s playoffs; every quarterfinalist came from a major metropolitan area. What 6A Texas high school football actually does is turn big cities into small towns; it gives residents of the state’s most crowded, busiest places a common purpose, a reason to know their neighbors’ kids’ names. This is the part of the job that Todd Dodge does better than anybody.