Rankings Nice, But Dragons Know It’s Only Preseason
Carroll Picked 8th in State by Football Mag
By Zach Warner
The Southlake Journal
Carroll is ranked eighth in the state by Texas Football.
It’s not unusual for the Carroll football team to find itself at or near the top of the preseason rankings, due to the success of the program in recent years.
During a five-year stretch from 2002-2006 in which the Dragons won four state titles after moving up to Class 5A, Carroll was often found atop many state and national polls. However, after a trying 2008 season that led to the team’s earliest playoff exit since 1997, the Dragons’ preseason placement might have seemed somewhat unclear.
But with the release of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine last month, with its own poll of high school teams from across the state, it’s evident that Carroll’s respect as a top program is still intact.
The Dragons were ranked No. 8 in the state by Campbell’s preseason poll, and predicted to finish first in what was a very challenging District 6-5A last season. The rankings don’t surprise Carroll coach Hal Wasson, but they also don’t change the view he already has regarding his team’s quest for success this season.
"The biggest ranking that we’re concerned with is the one at the end of the year," said Wasson, who returns for his third year as Dragons coach this fall. "That’s not cliché, that’s the honest deal.
"I don’t pay a lot of attention to rankings," he said. "We ask our team not to focus on that. … When you’re picked in the top 10, that’s respect for your program and that’s a good thing. But we’re going to be battle-tested early because we’ll be facing some really good programs … and that’s before we even enter our tough district schedule."
Wasson said he believes it’s a couple things that led to a top 10 ranking for Carroll, which looks to rebound from a year in which it didn’t win 10 games in a season for the first time since 2000. First, it’s the solid winning tradition the Dragons have put together on a consistent basis for many years. Secondly, it’s a large group of returning veterans, including eight on defense, five on offense and a great kicker in incoming senior Cade Foster.
But Wasson knows that a successful lineup on paper doesn’t always guarantee a high level of success during the season. He’d hate to even try to guess how well things will turn out for his team or other highly-regarded teams, due to all the factors involved, he said.
"There’s no way to predict or project how you’ll end," Wasson said. "I would have predicted in 2007 that with the team we had when we started, that we would have won it all if we could have, if we would have stayed healthy.
"You’ve got to be good, you’ve got to catch some breaks, and you have to flat-out stay healthy," he said. "That’s the truth from the NFL all the way down to 5A. I don’t make the rules on that. That’s just the way it is."
Unfortunately for Carroll, not all of those ingredients came together for the Dragons either of the last two years. Injury was one of the biggest bugaboos for Wasson’s teams – especially toward the end of the season in 2007, when Carroll was knocked off in the third round. The health concerns started earlier for the Dragons last season, as the team exited in the second round.
So when does a team know if it’s truly one of the top teams in the state?
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