Black coaches set to make history as the faces of the best in Texas high school football
Texas history will be made Saturday at the the UIL state football championships at AT&T Stadium.
For the first time ever, four Black coaches will lead their respective teams into the battle in Class 6A, the state’s largest classifications.
It will be Willie Gaston’s Galena Park North Shore Mustangs (15-0) vs. Reginald Samples and the Duncanville Panthers (13-1) in the 6A Division I contest at 3 p.m.
The Humble Sumner Creek Bulldogs (14-1), led by Kenny Harrison, will take on DeSoto Eagles (14-0) and coach Claude Mathis at 7 p.m.
And when you add in Dallas South Oak Oak (13-2) and Jason Todd going for their third straight state title against Port Neches Grove (14-1) at 11 a.m., Saturday represents a seminal moment for the state and Black coaches, who now represent and lead the best of Texas High School football.
A fact that no one can deny.
There have only been 12 Black coaches to win a UIL state championship and that includes Mathis, Samples and Todd of a year ago.
Duncanville and DeSoto are going for back-to-back titles.
And Todd is going for an historic third straight to continue what has been a magical story for an inner city school district during an era when suburban school districts with superior facilities and resources and one-team, one-town districts have dominated the title hauls.
In fact, there has been only one other official title since the state of Texas high school sports fully integrated with the ending of the Prairie View Interscholastic League(PVIL), which was the governing body for academic, athletic, and music competitions for Black high schools in Texas during the state’s segregationist era from 1920-1970, putting all public school competitions programs under the UIL.
Houston Yates won the 5A title in 1985. Dallas Carter actually won a 5A title on the field in 1988 but it was stripped in 1990 due to an ineligible player.
Thirty-one years passed before Todd and SOC broke through for the first time in 2021.
Before 2021, there were nine Black coaches who had won state football titles in the history of the UIL: Lydell Wilson at Lamar Consolidated in 2007, Luther Booker of Yates, Alex Durley who won at Beaumont Hebert in 1975 and Beaumont Westbrook in 1982, Robert Woods at Wilmer Hutchins in 1990, Allen Wilson at Tyler John Tyler in 1994 and Paris in 1988, Mike Jinks at Cibilo Steele in 2010, Willie Williams at Waco LaVega, Don Hill at Groveton in 1990 and Roy Harper at Burkeville in 1986 and 2001.
Now there are 12, including three in the last two years, with the possibility of adding two more on Saturday, which would be bittersweet locally as it would prevent a second straight threesome from the coaches in the southern sector of Dallas, whose schools are only minutes apart.
If Harrison and Gaston ruin what is expected to a southern Dallas party at AT&T Stadium, it will not dampen the historical significance of the proceedings.
Black coaches are not only leading talented teams, but they among the best and brightest, who built their programs on hard work and high level coaching acumen.
You don’t get to state and win state with just talented “cat daddies” and just rolling the ball out there.
You must be able coach.
That’s how you overcome four turnovers and a 6-foot-6 Georgia Tech-bound quarterback in Graham Knowles as Mathis and DeSoto did in a thrilling 45-38 victory over Southlake Carroll in the 6A semifinals to put themselves in the doorstep of a repeat.
The surely regrettable words of Carroll coach Riley Dodge, who in lauding his team’s effort punctuated some old wounds when he said “We don’t have all the five stars and all the cat daddies running around. We’ve got to be about our work.”
Whether he meant harm or not, words matter and those were tinged with racial overtones.
It came off as an insinuation that tradition-rich Carroll with it’s eight-state titles was about work and DeSoto’s success was rooted in five stars and cat daddies.
That’s unfair and patently false.
Too many times, Black coaches have had to take lesser jobs at seemingly impossible programs to win at because of numbers, resources and things outside of school outside of their control.
And often times when they did have success it was attributed to their five-star talent and/or cat daddies and not due to superior coaching and hard work.
You don’t get here three times like Todd or have a chance for back-to-back titles like Mathis and Samples, who has won everywhere he has been and is the eighth winningest coach in Texas high school football history, without programs rooted with hard work, discipline and top-notch schemes.
Harrison started at Sumner Creek in 2018 and has become the first coach in the 105-year history of the Humble school district to reach the state title game, let alone have a chance to win it.
Gaston is in his first year at North Shore after replacing the legendary Jon Kay, who decided to join college ranks as the linebackers coach at Rice after winning four state titles in nine seasons with the Mustangs.
Kay’s last game was a loss to Samples in the 2022 title game.
And now Gaston, who had been the team’s offensive coordinator since 2016 and has directed the prolific attacks of three previous title teams, has continued North Shore’s dominant ways with an undefeated season and has them back looking for revenge.
All represent the new faces of the best and brightest of Texas high coaches.
All are Black.
And their programs are seemingly here to stay.
This story was originally published December 14, 2023 at 9:28 AM.
