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2024 Texas High School Football

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MonkeyDoughnut

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1 hour ago, Dennis Taylor said:

Lots of great info there. Not the most technologically advanced site I've ever seen but someone is spending a shit load of time inputting all that data. 

Two main guys with some support around the state feeding stats - Joe Lee Smith and now taking over - Jerry Forrest

https://www.texasfootball.com/hof-joe-lee-smith?ref=search

Spoiler

Joe Lee Smith has probably spent more time researching Texas high school football than any man alive. ?Since 1965, Smith has spent six hours a day compiling season-by-season high school football scores for more than 1,100 UIL schools in Texas. He has also compiled records of Texas high school football coaches. His research has proven invaluable to football historians and has been featured in TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS ALL-TIME RECORD BOOK (which he co-edited), Bill McMurray’s TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL, KING FOOTBALL and on texpreps.com. ?Smith, who also authored a history of the White Oak Roughnecks, BENEATH THE TOWERING OIL WELLS, began his sportswriting career as sports editor of the PAMPA DAILY NEWS in 1961, joined the BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE a year later, and spent almost three decades covering high school football for the PORT ARTHUR NEWS. He served in athletic communications for Lamar University from 1963-96, and founded the Lamar Cardinal Hall of Honor.

https://www.gosanangelo.com/story/sports/high-school/2021/10/21/texas-high-school-football-history-joe-lee-smith-jerry-forrest/6119381001/

Spoiler

MIKE LEE: Texas high school football history is in good hands

Joe Lee Smith, the most important person in Texas high school football history that you’ve never heard of, had the foresight to know this time would come. The time when he no longer could maintain the weekly scores and team records, career coaching records and player statistics as the state’s most thorough historian.

So in the spring of 2020, at the age of 81, he handpicked his successor. Jerry Forrest was doing similar record keeping for his website pigskinprep.com. The two men had met over the phone a decade earlier when Smith, an old-school record keeper who uses a pen and paper, was ready to put his considerable collection of records about Texas schoolboy football on an internet website, texashighschoolfootballhistory.com.

A respectful friendship developed, and when it came time for Smith to pass the torch, he knew Forrest was the right person.

“There are a lot of websites out there that will swipe your information, but they won’t maintain it,” said Smith, a member of the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame. “It takes a lot of tedious work and dedication every year to update the records. Picking Jerry was not a hard decision because there weren’t many I trusted.

“Jerry wasn’t doing his website just for the money. He enjoys the history like I do. I knew he would maintain the records He’s a small-town guy from Mart, and he works for a living.”

Jerry Forrest
 

As a seventh-grader at Mart, Forrest went to the local newspaper office and started bugging the editor, John Sellman, about the hometown Panthers’ scores from seasons past. Sellman told Forrest those records were destroyed in a fire at the school, but if he wanted, he could find past scores on the newspaper’s microfilm.

“I spent the next 6-8 months going through every newspaper and finding every Mart score,” Forrest said. “If Mr. Sellman had told me to get lost, I’d never have done it.”

Forrest was an all-state kicker for the Panthers and a 1991 Mart High School graduate. In adulthood, he expanded his record keeping beyond Mart. He eventually purchased the pigskinprep.com domain and launched his website that now includes weekly and season scores, weekly rankings and predictions, a weekly newsletter, a message board, a Pick ‘Em Challenge, and a lot of Texas high school football history.

He maintains the website while working fulltime as a warehouse manager for the youth prison near Mart. To maintain his website, Forrest works about 30 hours on the weekends, plus a couple of nights a week.

Now 49, Forrest was humbled when Smith asked him to take over the maintenance of the records on his website.

“I had to pinch myself and ask Joe Lee, ‘Are you serious?’ ” Forrest said. “Joe Lee Smith is like a celebrity to me. The amount of work he put into his website is unbelievable. That he would trust me with it is an honor.

“I told Joe Lee that the website is his; I just wanted to keep it going.”

Realistically, though, Forrest had to ask himself if he had time to add the maintenance of Smith’s records to his own weekly record keeping.

“I’m good with computers and Excel. I can build anything on a computer,” said Forrest, now in his second season of taking over for Smith. “The technology makes it to where I don’t have to work as hard. I update all the scores and records myself, but I have seven or eight people around the state feeding me stats and information.”

Forrest already was keeping team scores and records. Smith was keeping individual coaching records and the top individual players’ stats. So in taking over for Smith, Forrest now peruses online newspapers each week for 400-yard passers, 300-yard rushers and 200-yard receivers.

Smith is still involved, focusing on research and checking for mistakes in the thousands of scores recorded since he began keeping up with the entire state as a hobby in 1965. He was the longtime sports information director at Lamar University in Beaumont, but spent his summers at the UIL office in Austin and driving to public libraries from Amarillo to Texarkana to Edinburg looking for missing scores.

His website includes the winningest and losingest teams in state history, individual records and yearly stat leaders dating to 1921, the yearly record for every team in the state, all-time playoff scores for every team, career coaching records for everyone who has been a head coach, and breakdowns of the state’s oldest rivalries.

Smith’s website included UIL 11-man schools. Forrest plans to add his records for six-man and private schools.

“We need history,” Smith said. “Texas high school football didn’t start today. It didn’t start with Allen and Aledo and De Soto. It started with Waco and Abilene back in the 1920s. There have been powerhouses in every decade. There was Breckenridge in the 1950s and Sonora in the ‘60s. Lubbock High is not very good today, but they were dominant in the 1950s.

“We move on and tend to forget those teams.”

Over the last 25 years, a lot of record keepers – from those keeping up with their local team to those trying to keep track of the entire state – have passed on. Sadly, a lot of their records were thrown away or haven’t been maintained and updated.

As Smith’s successor, Forrest figures to have a long run, but he’s already planning how to maintain the records after he can no longer do it.

“As long as I’m alive,” Forrest said, “I’ll have it set up where we can pass it on to the next person.”

 

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AbeFroman

AbeFroman 3090

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4 hours ago, Iceman said:

I have never been to the State games at Jerry World.  When purchasing tix online, they are all general admission, but listed under a multitude of numbers such as GA 22, GA 50, and GA 9.  There are not that many freaking gates, so what do the numbers indicate?

The numbers are a tracking system for the ticket distributor, they mean nothing to you and me.  All tickets are general admission and are for the full day you purchase them.    Use whatever gate is open and sit wherever you want.

There are resale tickets out there on Stubhub, Ticketcenter etc..  obviously don't do that, plenty of tickets are available.  The exception to that is SeatGeek, because they are the primary ticket distributor for the stadium and the Cowboys, they will have face-value tickets.

https://www.uiltexas.org/press-releases/detail/tickets-on-sale-for-uil-football-state-championships-at-att-stadium

Ticket windows are always open if you prefer just to wait and walk up day of.

 

 

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bEastTexas

bEastTexas 497

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7 hours ago, AbeFroman said:

The numbers are a tracking system for the ticket distributor, they mean nothing to you and me.  All tickets are general admission and are for the full day you purchase them.    Use whatever gate is open and sit wherever you want.

There are resale tickets out there on Stubhub, Ticketcenter etc..  obviously don't do that, plenty of tickets are available.  The exception to that is SeatGeek, because they are the primary ticket distributor for the stadium and the Cowboys, they will have face-value tickets.

https://www.uiltexas.org/press-releases/detail/tickets-on-sale-for-uil-football-state-championships-at-att-stadium

Ticket windows are always open if you prefer just to wait and walk up day of.

 

 

This is not true, per UIL website there will be no ticket offices open on the day of the game. You must purchase tickets through SeatGeek and must only be shown on your cell phone at the gate no printed out copies. 

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AbeFroman

AbeFroman 3090

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6 minutes ago, bEastTexas said:

This is not true, per UIL website there will be no ticket offices open on the day of the game. You must purchase tickets through SeatGeek and must only be shown on your cell phone at the gate no printed out copies. 

Let it be known

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TreatyOak

TreatyOak 17197

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11 minutes ago, futureman said:

this man built you into a powerhouse.

Yes, Dodge is the greatest coach we've ever had. We were frustrated that he retired, then he un-retired, and went to another program but we're very happy w/ our current coach. It's just hard to match the quarterback whisperer.

We were really floundering before he came, so I am grateful we had him as long as we did. 

 

 

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cafe society

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On 12/16/2024 at 2:23 PM, Helobious said:

Absolutely nobody outside of your mind thinks that. It’s not 1985 anymore. These players watch so much film from multiple games and Westlake has been a dominant force in the state for almost a decade. They are almost always the biggest and fastest team on the field. They win by combining superior athletes with superior scheme and execution, they’ve never won because a team was caught off guard by their speed. North Crowley hasn’t been to state in 20 years probably, they have a young and inexperienced head coach, and are undersized in the trenches compared to Westlake. And their best WR is like 5’7”. The Chaps are massive favorites.  

North Crowley high school is in its third year of existence.

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ATXbronco

ATXbronco 4381

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23 hours ago, Vic Mackey said:

.d8cb7b3aafb3e57a3baf92115d73508f.jpg29403e30c14ca17ae7cbc0f516000e94.jpg2844af1ca0bad20bcf9b7b54709cb3a4.jpg69bee0ce20536c0c7efdb7b9e46a4d21.jpg

Sucks that the Saturday games coincide with the CFP games.  

 

Also, a random coincidence is that Quinn's playoff game starts the same time & day as Southlake Carrol's, which I believe is where he uh, graduated(?) from?
Is an early graduation still a real graduation or is it more like a GED graduation?

*Carroll's

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Bevo&Pevo

Bevo&Pevo 5507

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On 12/16/2024 at 6:43 PM, Iceman said:

Some a y'all need this link.  Get ready to burn a few hours looking at old stats and coaching records...

https://www.texashighschoolfootballhistory.com/won-loss_records

 

On 12/16/2024 at 7:10 PM, Dennis Taylor said:

Lots of great info there. Not the most technologically advanced site I've ever seen but someone is spending a shit load of time inputting all that data. 

Good and interesting for sure.   Whoever did the data input is probably a 10 key champion today.

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