As Dallas-Fort Worth grows, the ‘last hurrah’ of small school football nears

Anna needs Celina. Celina needs Anna.

The two single-school communities north of Dallas have been heavily impacted by the growth of their contemporaries surrounding them. But in 2022 the two kindled a rivalry in the regular season and playoffs that felt ripped from the pages of Friday Night Lights, one that cuts to the heart of what makes small-high school football great.

“You’ve got to have a rival,” Anna coach Seth Parr said. “But man, I want to beat them.”

Celina coach Bill Elliott said, “I love the rivalry game. Hopefully we can maintain that with them.”

The good news for Parr and Elliott is that Anna and Celina are on track to grow together. Their budding rivalry may last years.

The bad news, for the state of Class 4A football in the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth area, is that those two will outgrow their current classification along the way.

Anna, the No. 1 team in The Dallas Morning News’ preseason 4A rankings, and Celina, No. 2, are the two closest programs Dallas-Fort Worth has to a 4A powerhouse. Both may very well be too large for the 4A Div. I classification by the start of next football season. By the 2026 realignment, both will surely be 5A programs.

Former 4A powers Argyle and Melissa, now state-ranked programs in their second season at the 5A Div. II classification, came and went as well. Prosper, a 6A contender, played in 4A as recently as 2014.

Their collective growth has left Dallas-Fort Worth’s 4A landscape thinner than it was before. And if Anna, Celina and other burgeoning North Texas suburbs continue to boom, that same scene may become a nonfactor from a competitive standpoint.

“It’s going to get really strange,” Elliott said. “It’s going to drastically change, especially whoare the dominant teams in the area, because all of the dominant teams are going to be gone.”

And because of that, the final days of high-level small-school football in Dallas-Fort Worth may be nearing.

“This is the last hurrah,” Parr said.

The impact of growth

Kaufman (1,235) and Anna (1,215) were each within 85 students of classifying as 5A Div. II programs during the 2022 realignment cycle. Frisco Panther Creek (1,118.53), which opened in 2022, wasn’t far behind. Celina, which registered an enrollment of 994 students on snapshot day in 2021, projects to have over 3,000 students by 2032.

Parr expects Anna to rise to the 5A Div. II classification as part of the 2024 realignment cycle. Elliott said he thinks Celina will remain in 4A Div. I for the 2024-25 school years, but that it’ll be in the 5A Div. II classification in 2026.

What does that leave? Here’s perspective: Only three Dallas-area 4A teams won double-digit games last season. Anna (13-1) and Celina (11-2) were two of them. The third, Aubrey (10-3), competes in 4A Div. II, but it expects to have 2,000-plus students by 2031 and could have a brief stint in 4A Div. I before moving up to 5A. Gunter, the reigning 3A Div. I state champion, could find itself in the 4A classification sooner rather than later, but it’s an hour north of Dallas.

“I don’t know how many 4A teams there are going to be,” Parr said. “Unfortunately, I’m kind of seeing a sad deal, it’s starting to go away. 4A football is going to be a lot different; a lot of these schools are going to be 5A.”

That great departure of contenders has already started. Argyle rose to 5A Div. II in 2022 and left the Dallas area without a flagship 4A program. Melissa, a dark horse 5A Div. II state title contender in 2023, went along with it.

And if Anna, Celina, Kaufman and Panther Creek do the same by the 2024 or 2026 realignment cycles, the strength of Dallas-Fort Worth’s small school football scene will only weaken.

So what could the future of 4A look like in D-FW? The present of 3A could forecast it. Just four Dallas-area teams — Madison, Gateway Charter Academy, Life Oak Cliff and Dallas A+ — are classified as 3A teams. None of those four won a playoff game in 2022.

Just 20 Dallas-area teams are classified as 4A teams, compared with 56 in 5A and 67 in 6A.

That leaves the Dallas area heavy at the top and thin at the bottom. It also means that fewer and fewer area 4A teams will likely be contending for state championships in the coming years.

“4A, it’s probably going to be dominated by East Texas and West Texas,” Parr said.

That may already be the case.

4A hasn’t been for D-FW

Texas’ largest classifications are dominated by the state’s largest metropolises. Since 2010, just two football teams outside major metropolitan areas — College Station in 2017 and Longview in 2018 — have won a state championship in one of Texas’ four largest divisions, 6A Div. I, 6A Div. II, 5A Div. I and 5A Div. II. This is where the Dallas area — which won state championships in three of those four classes last season — makes its hay.

The state’s middle classification, 4A, belongs largely to those in farther-flung communities. China Spring, winners of the last two 4A Div. I championships, resides just outside Waco. Back-to-back 4A Div. II state champion Carthage is closer to Shreveport than any major Texas city. Since the UIL adopted its six-classification format in 2014, just one Dallas-area team (Argyle in 2020) has won one of the 20 possible 4A state championships. It’s the only program within a major metro area across Texas to have won a 4A state championship in that span.

“They put more into it than some of the schools in these big cities,” Parr said, adding that it’s easier for single-school districts to make wholesale improvements to athletics and football than it is for a multischool district.

“I don’t think it’s a rural or suburban thing. It’s really, ‘What does it mean to that ISD?’”

Celina, an eight-time state champion, hasn’t won since its 3A Div. II crown in 2007. Kennedale’s loss to Carthage in the 2017 4A Div. I state championship game was the school’s lone trip to a title game. Aubrey and Anna have never advanced to even a state semifinal, though both programs have taken significant steps toward one in recent years.

Anna lost to China Spring in last year’s regional finals. Celina lost to Anna the round prior. Kennedale lost to Celina the round before that. Aubrey, in 4A Div. II, lost to Texarkana Pleasant Grove in the regional semifinals.

That same roadblock to AT&T Stadium may exist this season, too.

China Spring is the preseason No. 1 in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football’s statewide 4A Div. I rankings; Stephenville, the 2021 state champion, is fourth. Both reside in 4A Div. I Region I alongside Celina (No. 6), Anna (No. 8), Kennedale (No. 18) and Carter (23).

It won’t make Dallas’ last great chance at 4A glory any easier.

Hope for those who’ll stay

Carter is one of the Dallas area’s largest 4A teams, with an enrollment of 1,161. It, alongside its Dallas ISD 4A contemporaries Pinkston, North Dallas and Wilmer-Hutchins, aren’t on the same kind of growth trajectory as the northern suburbs.

That may not necessarily be a bad thing.

South Oak Cliff reinvigorated Dallas ISD football with back-to-back 5A Div. II state championships in 2022 and 2021. But that success at the highest level for Dallas city schools has been far and few between outside of that; before South Oak Cliff’s 2021 title, a Dallas ISD team hadn’t won a recognized football state championship in the previous 63 years. (Carter forfeited its 1988 title.)

A less crowded district and region may provide a more viable opportunity for schools such as Carter to contend.

“I think, for us, it helps us gain a little competitive advantage with some of those teams moving up,” said Carter coach Spencer Gilbert, whose team competes in District 7-4A Div. I alongside Celina. “They always had numbers that we didn’t have when we played against them. I think it kind of levels us out with them moving up and gives us an opportunity to compete.”

Carter will still need to contend with the likes of China Spring and Stephenville for a deep postseason run.

“With the success that South Oak Cliff has had over there, it has allowed the resources to be spent in various schools,” Gilbert said. “Once you get the resources, you will start seeing us be more competitive across the board.”

That’d be a win for Carter and the rest of Dallas ISD.

It could also be a win for the Dallas-area 4A scene.

Those, in these next few years, may be harder and harder to come by.

Staff writer Greg Riddle contributed to this report.

On Twitter: @McFarland_Shawn

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