Trojans take lessons from loss to Carroll

The Euless Trinity football team is down but far from out. It doesn’t get much bigger in this area than Southlake Carroll versus Trinity, and that was again the case Friday night at Dragon Stadium in Southlake.

In front of a packed house, the two high school football heavyweights traded blows until only Carroll was left standing. The Dragons scored the only points of the second half en route to a 42-28 victory and a firm grasp on the driver’s seat in the District 5-6A title race.

“I think the basic thing is that when this is all said and done, we want our kids to learn some life lessons,” Trinity coach Chris Jensen said. “Dealing with loss is part of life. This isn’t the end of the world, and in fact it’s something we can turn into a positive and learn from it and improve and get better.

“To us it’s not a devastating loss,” he added. “The kids are fine. I’m sure there was some humbling, but maybe that’s good. You need to be humbled sometimes.”

Being humbled isn’t fun. And as defensive lineman Sam Leota pointed out, taking the fun out of the game takes the team out of its game.

“I definitely think Southlake had more fun than we did,” Leota said. “That’s something Coach Jensen says to us all the time is that the team that has most fun will play the best, and it definitely showed. Defensively we weren’t having any fun at all. At one point we just weren’t enjoying the game like we usually do. That’s what threw us off our game.

“Not to take anything away from Southlake, they’re a really good team. That offense is really good. They just enjoyed the game more than we did and had more fun than we did. That showed at the end on the scoreboard.”

Jensen concurred that his defense found itself in unfamiliar territory in the first half.

“That’s the first time someone had dominated us a little bit and dominated the line of scrimmage and put points on the board,” Jensen said, referring to Carroll’s 28 first-half points. “We didn’t know how to handle that defensively. We got our pride hurt. I think we got our head down instead of just understanding that good teams are going to make plays against you every now and then.”

The best news for Trinity is that the loss doesn’t derail its playoff mission. Plenty remains on the table for the Trojans, and Leota and the rest of the team know it.

“It’s something that definitely won’t break us,” he said. “One thing that’s special about this team is that you can bend us back and forth and forth and back and won’t break us. I love that about this team. It doesn’t matter if we win all the games or lose all them. We’re still a team and we stick together and will always play like it’s our last. It’s just something special about this team and this program.”

From Jensen’s perspective, the loss also offers some teachable moments.

“The good news is that what we’ve seen [on film] is that everything is fixable, and that’s encouraging,” he said. “A couple of plays can make the difference in the game, so we need to play closer to perfect.”

Trinity will have an opportunity to rebound against a rebuilding Trophy Club Byron Nelson team that is winless on the season before the annual rivalry game with Hurst L.D. Bell on Oct. 13.

This story was originally published October 3, 2016 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Trojans take lessons from loss to Carroll."