Published: February 07, 2008 04:26 pm            

UIL realignment brings on David vs. Goliath

~ Commentary ~

By ART LAWLER

Staff Writer



If the Mabank Panthers and the Eustace Bulldogs were suddenly reassigned to play in the NFL, Mabank’s Jimmy Cantrell, Eustace’s Doug Wendel and Kemp’s Gregg Anderson would react by shrugging and saying, “Bring ‘em on.”

What else are you going to do — send out a message to your kids that they’ve been asked to slay Goliath with a pea shooter?

Why not?

Gentlemen, load your shooters and aim high.

The Panthers may have had Goliath-type numbers the last couple of years in Class 3A, but they’ll be fighting from David’s vantage point come fall.

From a schedule of playing teams with 1,000 or so students down to about 400, the Panthers will now face 4A schools, some with as many as 1,900 students.

Mabank has 984 students.

Goliath would have needed a pea-shooter to deal with some of these high-number football programs.

And Eustace, which had a couple of students too many to drop down to Class 2A, will keep its pea-shooter and continue battling much larger schools in Class 3A.

Kemp, with 483 students, isn’t much better off than Eustace in Class 3A where some schools have up to 979 kids.

From a numbers standpoint, the new schools the Yellowjackets and Bulldogs will be playing will actually be closer in size than Kaufman and Mabank, which will be leaving the district.

Still, these two schools will be playing with a shorter stick than the other schools.

But Cantrell, Wendel and Anderson aren’t shying away from the competition.

“It don’t matter,” Cantrell shrugged bravely. “It’s just another number behind a letter for me,” Cantrell said last Friday when the realignments were announced.

Yeah, and the difference between a five-figure salary and a six-figure salary is just another zero.

Wendel admitted he was surprised by the way District 13-3A got torn to shreds in the realignment process, but said, “We’re good with it. It’s a six-team district.

“Our goals are the same:

• try to improve every week;

• be the best that we can be;

• play to go to the playoffs.”

Okay, let’s join in with the bravado, and try to envision success.

Wendel has non-conference plans to play Grace Community, a private school in Tyler, Life Oak Center in Dallas, Edgewood, Quitman and Ferris in non-district.

The Dogs can beat any one of those teams. The catch is, any one of those teams can beat Eustace.

So the first five games should come down to attitude, desire, and, of course, those consarned turnovers.

I’d bet on the Dogs having plenty of attitude and desire.

Then comes, not necessarily in this order, Canton, Van, Mineola,Wills Point and Kemp.

The Dogs can expect big-time trouble from Canton, Van and Wills Point. Doesn’t mean they can’t beat those teams. They just need to pack a sack lunch.

Mineola and Kemp: flip a coin.

So......

Let’s say Eustace goes 4-1 in non-district and then takes on strong programs in Van, Canton and Wills Point.

Then let’s say they knock off one of the three.

They’re now 5-3.

Now add in victories over Kemp and Mineola, and you could say a 7-3 season is not out of the question.

Neither is 3-7, because, well, because Kemp, for instance, has already been slighted in print, just one paragraph back, and teams like that get testy.

As for Mabank, Cantrell said he had already set his team’s schedule as if it was going to be a 4-A team.

He wants to break in next year’s team with some tough 3A schools like Kaufman, Athens, Kemp and Van to work out the kinks. Then it’s on to his new seven-team district — Forney, Lancaster, Mesquite Poteet, Red Oak, Terrell and West Mesquite.

Red Oak and West Mesquite are playoff teams and Forney has been a power for several years up to the last couple of years.

Reasonably speaking, Mabank could beat Kaufman, Athens, Kemp and Van.

And again, those teams are all good enough to knock off the Panthers, with the possible exception of Kemp, which will be playing up. There we go, building more chips on the shoulders of the Yellowjackets. So be it.

Let’s say they beat three of the four.

Lancaster and Forney shouldn’t be out of the question. Terrell wasn’t a playoff team, nor was Mesquite Poteet.

Let’s say they win three of those four. That gives Cantrell’s bunch a 6-2 record, leaving West Mesquite, the defending district champion and Red Oak, a playoff team, to deal with.

Even if they lose those two, they’d finish 6-4 and probably be in the playoffs.

You may have already noticed that we’re penciling in both Eustace and Mabank to have more wins next fall in the regular season than they had last fall. Eustace was 6-4 and Mabank was 5-5, improving to 6-6 with the two playoff games.

Maybe I’m too optimistic here in early February, but maybe I’m not.

Both programs have matured. The competition is better, but so are the Dogs and the Panthers.

“I don’t mean any disrespect,” Cantrell said, “But we’re a lot further along than when I got here. The kids know the offense and the defense a lot better.

“Our numbers are better, too. That first winter, not counting basketball players, we had 22 football players in the weight room. Now, we have two athletic periods, with 50 sophomores and 35 freshmen, and with next year’s freshmen, we’ll start out with about 150 kids, about the same as last year.”

They’ll also have one of the top quarterbacks in the state in Kolton Browning, who they now know can be devastating both with the run and the pass.

Anderson likes the improved balance, but playing schools like Canton, Van and Wills Point, all with strong programs, isn’t likely to benefit the Jackets, at least for a while.

Best revenge on those who realign is to win anyway. But that’s not always possible.

Look, I’m not trying to baby these kids in this area, but think about it like this; when Sugar Ray Leonard was the one of the greatest welterweights of all time, how would he have fared in the ring with Muhammad Ali? Or Smokin’ Joe Frazier? Or Sonny Liston? Or George Foreman?

But enough of this rich-getting richer, by playing undermanned teams with small numbers.

Instead of asking why some schools rarely win and others win all the time, a better question might be, why don’t they pick on somebody their own size every week, and then see what kind of record they wind up with?

Some teams have perennially good records because they pencil in six or seven wins against inferior programs with inferior numbers before the first kickoff of the season.

Mabank Superintendent Dr. Russell Marshall probably had the most honest response when he was asked to comment on Mabank being put into Class 4A.

“You don’t want my comments,” he said. “They’re not printable.”

        

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