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Monday, September 8, 2008
SHHHHHHHH......
Houston, TX
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By: Neal Farmer
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Photo(s) By: Diana Porter
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Cy Woods is city’s best kept secret
There is a joke going around about Cypress Woods High School. Its nickname is the Wildcats, but it should have been the Tiger.
Why? They could have been Tiger Woods. (Drum chunk.)
But there is a case for the analogy not being that far off.
Cy Woods opened two years ago in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, and in 2008 will play varsity football for the first time. It is one of the most-anticipated opening seasons for a team that has never played a varsity game. The Wildcats previously roared out of the gate, with the top junior varsity team losing one game in two years. The top freshman team has the same 18-1 overall record. It could be said they are having the same success as Tiger Woods, but that success is on the equivalent of the junior golf tour and not the PGA. Will that early success carry any stroke when the Wildcats play on Fridays this year?
“I would be lying to say that previous (sub-varsity) success is any indication for success on the varsity level,’’ said CWHS head coach David Jones. “A lot of times, people bump up their best kids to the varsity from the junior varsity, so sometimes you are playing against backups. Time will tell.”
Jones has already been in this position, starting a new football program at West Moore High School outside of Oklahoma City as an assistant coach, and beginning another program in Edmond, Okla., North High School as a head coach. But he said he is in a much-better situation in CFISD. During his first year at Cy-Woods, he had nearly 290 come out for the JV and freshman teams. Last year, that number ballooned to around 350. One of the telling signs was that his junior varsity beat three varsity programs last season. The Wildcats popped Marshall, 63-28, blew past Coldspring, 37-18, and pushed past Wimberley, 29-27, for an undefeated 10-0 record. The top freshman team also went 10-0.
“This is a lot-better situation than before (in Oklahoma),” Jones said. “I think we are further ahead than we ever have been before. But a lot of that is due to the group of kids we have, the support of our staff, the administration, the principal and associate principal, and our parents, who are incredibly supportive of what we are trying to do.”
The top name on the team is tailback Chris Walker, who shined in previous seasons. But Walker had surgery near the end of July and will not be ready for the first few games of the season, Jones said. So the Wildcats will run two or three at that position. The squad also has a lot of players hoping to contribute at almost every other position.
“We will have tailback by committee,” Jones said. “We will have wide receiver by committee. We will play 7-8 offensive linemen, 5-6 defensive linemen, 4-5 linebackers, and 6-7 defensive backs. The only position we will not rotate is quarterback with Lucas DeVilliers. He has a preseason offer to West Point. He is a multi-talented kid who can run and throw. I think he is being overlooked because of Russell Shepherd (at Cypress Ridge) and Kolby Gray (at Cypress Falls). And he is a great kid on top of all of that talent.”
Cypress Ridge and Cypress Falls and their respective quarterbacks are easily recognizable names on the Greater Houston high school football landscape, but those programs have gone through these same growing pains before -- and fairly recently.
Wayne Hooks, a former head coach at Memorial and a former assistant at Rice, opened the Cy-Falls program in 1992 with current head coach David Raffield as an assistant on his staff. In 1994, Cy-Falls joined the varsity club and posted a 6-4 record and missed the playoffs by one game. After a disappointing 3-7 campaign the following year, Cy-Falls has played in the postseason seven times -- including the last four in a row. They also played a subvarsity schedule for two years before a varsity schedule.
“When you play on Friday night in front of a larger crowd and the best players at the opposing school are playing, then the intensity goes up,” Raffield said.
Raffield said another key for the Golden Eagles will also assist the Wildcats when they start this year -- the teams began varsity play with seniors.
“Schools who begin a varsity schedule with only juniors struggle due to size and strength,” Raffield said. “All of our schools (in CFISD) have started competition with seniors. There really is a difference at that age level.”
A problem Raffield had to conquer was when officials took out the whittling knife and reworked high school boundary lines because of population shifts in the hyper-fast-growing Cy-Fair ISD. Cy-Falls is in the middle of the district, and consequently, saw almost as many changes to the face of its programs as Hannah Montana has experienced.
In 1996, the boundaries were changed for the Golden Eagles, followed by changes in 1999 and 2000. And then again in 2003.
“In this senior class, I have only eight kids who played on the freshman A football team,” Raffield said. “The rest are at Cy-Woods or Cy-Fair.”
Losing potential players is a problem when a school district grows and adds a high school a year. Raffield pointed out that the Golden Eagles had 64 seniors when they made it to the state championship game two years ago, and this year’s edition will have only 36 seniors.
At Cy-Ridge, Gary Thiebaud opened the football program seven years ago in 2002, and accomplished something that had never been done in Cy-Fair ISD. The Rams made the playoffs in their first year as a varsity squad.
The biggest problem was galvanizing the troops, Thiebaud said, because after the re-zoning to get kids into Cy-Ridge, there were some kids who just didn’t want to be there. The Cy-Ridge students came from five high schools and three middle schools.
“Opening a new school is a tremendous task,” Thiebaud said. “You get kids who want to be here and kids who were forced to be here because they were rezoned. You have to bring them all together and form the foundation of the school and the athletic program.”
To that end, the coaches developed a theme: to be in the playoffs in the first year of varsity play. The coaches began that theme the day the school opened and continued it for two years through varsity action.
“Some of those kids could have been on the varsity at their other schools, and they weren’t going to get to play varsity here until their senior season,” Thiebaud said. “Then the coaches were from around the state, and some were in the semifinals the year before. They had to reset their clock because we were dealing with freshmen and sophomores. What a hard sale that was!”
But it worked. Cy-Ridge beat Cy-Fair High School the last game of the regular season, with the winner advancing to the playoffs and the loser staying home. The win also allowed the Rams to share a district championship.
“If anybody knows a first-year program can win it, we know that,” Thiebaud said. “Cy-Woods has our attention. And we know what they went through.”
Theibaud has talked with Gene Johnson at Cypress Ranch and Robert Blackshear at Cypress Lakes, schools that will open this year and not play a varsity game for two seasons. And another coach who has picked Thiebaud’s brain? Jones, who has been to many meetings with the Rams’ coaches.
“David Jones has been here a lot of time visiting when he got the job,” Theibaud said. “Opening a new school is a tremendous task.”
Jones is hoping that what he learned from Theibaud and the Rams will help ease the task of the playoffs and a district championship. The expectation of just doing well in the first year of a program has been tossed out the window.
“(Not making the playoffs) will be a major letdown and a disappointment,” Jones said. “The true test is when you can go week-to-week like David and Gary have. We expect our kids and our school to be successful. Our administration expects it as well as our coaches and kids. We didn’t get into this thing to be average.”
Spoken like a Tiger lurking in the Woods.•
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