Season opener: Southlake Carroll 25, South Grand Prairie 8

'I like the W'

GRAND PRAIRIE -- To his credit, Riley Dodge didn’t try to sugarcoat the performance of his team in his first outing as head football coach of the Southlake Carroll Dragons.

“It wasn’t a great start,” he admitted ruefully in a post-game radio interview. “Things didn’t go the way we wanted. We had to grind it out. It wasn’t pretty, but I like the W.”

Oh, brother, was he right. The Dragons’ victory over the South Grand Prairie Warriors wasn’t pretty, at all. It was ugly, ugly as can be.

In fact, during the first half, both teams looked like drunken sailors on shore leave – energetic but ineffectual, determined but unfocused, loud but incoherent. It was the worst half of Dragon football I’ve watched in the last 12 years. The score at intermission? 0-0.

And trust me, the ordeal for fans watching the sordid affair from the stands was more acute than the score would indicate.

True, the second half was better, but not enough to wash out the bad taste left by the first.

Luckily for me, the Dragon Marching Band set up shop across the aisle from me, and its young musicians proved to be same inspiring, entertaining bunch they were when my daughter played among them.

The Torquemadas who run the band had the kids dressed in their heavy uniforms, tunics buttoned to the throat, gloves in place, despite the 93-degree heat. Their counterparts in the Warrior band were dressed in short-sleeves and shorts, but our kids were in full kit.

Their bright faces gleaming with sweat, they didn’t let the heat dull their enthusiasm. I was particularly fascinated by a pair of contrabass bugle players, two mere wisps of girls, one with a beet-red face who I feared might collapse at any moment from heat exhaustion.

Instead, she and her companion, their braided hair flying, were throwing their massive instruments around as if they were harmonicas, lifting them over their heads, swinging them to and fro in time to the music, their cheeks puffing out like Dizzy Gillespie as they played the deep-throated contras.

If the Dragons below had performed with the same intensity and skill as these two youngsters, it would have been a different game.

But it wasn’t. As I watched the brilliant Emerald Belles perform at halftime, I fervently hoped Dodge and his coordinators could organize their players into some semblance of a football team.

And they did. Less than two minutes into the third quarter, the Dragons asserted themselves in a dramatic way and indicated they were finally ready to play.

The shift occurred, as it often does, with a misstep by their opponents. Warrior quarterback Drake Logan had executed several shovel passes in the first half. Facing a 3-and-20 from his 12 yard line, he tried another.

Senior defensive end Alex Kingston sniffed out the play immediately, snatching the ball at the 15 and lumbering into the end zone. On the conversion, quarterback Will Bowers, appearing to hold for kicker Neal Koskay, instead spirited untouched for 2.

Kingston’s heads-up play was one of three turnovers that sealed the Warriors’ fate. Defensive back Brandon Howell snagged one Logan pass, and four-star recruit R.J. Mickens, perhaps the best athlete on the team, caught another.

After the game, Kingston was still buzzing with the thrill of it all.

“The adrenaline was pumping,” he said in a radio interview. “It was fantastic. The last time I scored a touchdown was on the freshman B team when I played running back. I’m honored to have scored the first touchdown of my senior season. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.”

Dodge acknowledged Kingston’s heads-up play was the spark the Dragons needed.

“It gave us momentum,” he said. “It got the second half off to a good start.”

South Grand Prairie quickly responded, smartly marching 75 yards in a10-play drive that ended when Keodrick Young sprinted 25 yards for a touchdown. For the conversion, Young lined up in the wildcat and tossed the ball to Logan in a corner of the end zone for 2. That tied things up.

 The teams would remain knotted for the remainder of the 3^rd and well into the 4^th quarter. Then the Dragons surged ahead after struggling to the 3 in 12 tortuous plays.

From there, 3-star recruit T.J. McDaniel plunged over for his first, and only, TD of the night. Three minutes later, the Dragons tacked on a 24-yard field goal by punter Joe McFadden to lead 18-8.

If the Warriors can take any comfort from the loss, it would be their success in bottling up the talented McDaniel for most of the night. They kept him well under 100 yards in 24 carries, and denied him leading rusher honors for the Dragons. That laurel went to Bowers, the offensive star of the evening, such as it was.

But nothing came easy for Bowers last night. He completed barely 50 percent of his passes for a paltry 69 yards, overshooting his inexperienced receiving corps for much of the evening. True, he frequently was scrambling, harassed by sturdy Warrior linebackers who repeatedly shredded the O-line to disrupt passing and rushing schemes.

The passing game was one of the question marks hanging over the Dragons before the season began. After opening night, it still is. Consider this: Bowers completed passes to six different receivers. But McDaniel led the pack on the strength of 4 catches for 16 yards.

 Bowers also led in rushing. But most of his 97 rushing yards came on a 69-yard TD sprint around the left sideline with less than 4 minutes left.

By that time, the Dragon band had already struck up “Hey, Baby,” the traditional signal that Carroll victory is nigh.

Dodge was reminded by radio announcer Chuck Kelly after the game that at least he won his first game as Carroll head coach. It took his dad, the revered and beloved Todd Dodge, four games to get his first win. Did Riley plan on calling his dad to gig him, Kelly asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” he quickly replied.

His players know, too, that they came perilously close to screwing the pooch on this one.

Senior offensive lineman Henry Mossberg told Kelly his teammates had worked hard all summer (presumably unsupervised) to prepare for this season. Along with their coach, they had keenly anticipated this game.

“I have mixed feelings about tonight,” said Mossberg, a team leader. “I felt like I executed OK, but as a team we weren’t working together like we should. At halftime, we made some adjustments and worked some things out. The second half was better.”

Indeed. Mossberg and his teammates stiffened in the second half, allowing the offense to shake off its lethargy. Likewise, the D-line kept the young Warrior offense at bay, save for that one impressive drive in the 3^rd.

Despite the disapproving tone of this report, all is not doom and gloom. Last night’s desultory performance should serve as a wakeup call, a signal that much hard work lies ahead and an opportunity to identify what needs to be done.

Let’s hope so because the Big Cats are coming. Carroll hosts the Colleyville Heritage Panthers next Friday, cross-town rivals who have never beaten the Dragons and would love nothing more than to do so.

The week after, the Odessa Permian Panthers blow in from West Texas, eager to remind the Metroplex that once upon a time, they ruled Friday Night Lights.

The future of these Dragons still is shrouded in uncertainty. But one thing is clear. They love their new coach – and the legacy of greatness he represents. They trust him to carry them forward.

“Coach Dodge is the best coach I’ve ever had,” said Kingston on the greatest night of his young life. “He played on three state championship teams. He knows what it takes to get there.”