Teams of the Decade

Enough with the "this is not the end of the decade" technicalities. 2000 began the decade, 2010 begins a new decade, it just makes sense. So anyway, thinking about the best high school football teams of the decade.

5A: Southlake Carroll. No question the Dragons earned the honor despite strong showings from Katy and Euless Trinity. No team ever has or possibly ever will have a run like the Dragons did in playing in 5 consecutive state championship games and winning 4 of them...and that one loss was their only loss in that span...unbelieveable.

4A: Lake Travis. At the beginning of the decade it was a battle between Denton Ryan and Ennis as the Raiders played in four consecutive championship games and won two of them while the Lions won titles in 2000, 2001, and 2004. But the Lake Travis Cavaliers ended the Decade on a 46 game winning streak and three consecutive state championships.

3A: Liberty Hill. Probably the most wide open classification. Everman, and Carthage each won back-to-back championships as well but Liberty Hill did it with impressive victories over Celina and Gilmer. Jerry Vance's Panthers were as good as could be in 06-07.

2A: Celina. The Bobcats finished the decade as a 3A football team but won 2A state titles in 2000, 2001, and 2005 and a 3A title in 2007. G.A. Moore established the tradition, but Butch Ford kept it going for the program with more state championships than any other team in Texas.

1A: Stratford. The Elks won state championships at the beginning (2000), middle (2005), and end (2008) of the decade. No team in class A was as consistently good though teams like Alto and Windthorst certainly deserve mention.

No telling which teams will emerge as the best in the next ten years, but given the strong history of the above mentioned programs, we will likely see these teams contending for the title again.

doug