UNDEFEATED HAWKS AIM FOR STATE TITLE,
Undefeated season, title run has been 34 years coming
It took Pleasant Grove 34 varsity seasons to reach the peak of Texas high school football. The Hawks have one more hurdle to plant their flag at the summit.
Pleasant Grove clashes with West Orange-Stark for the Class 4A, Division II championship at 3 p.m. Friday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
This is the first finals appearance for the Hawks (15-0), and the Mustangs (130) ride a 40-game win streak into their fourth straight championship game. There will be a community sendoff for Pleasant Grove’s football team at the high school today. The team’s departure is set for 12:30 p.m.
Steve Morris has been an assistant with the Hawk program for 17 of the past 19 years, twice serving as offensive coordinator as well as special teams coordinator. He and Blake Worley coach linebackers.
Pleasant Grove’s deepest runs in the playoffs, previous to this fall, were regional finals appearances in 2001 and 2009. Morris was an assistant and/or coordinator on both of those teams.
“I’ve been working the defensive side since I’ve come back (two years at Fouke),” Morris said. “Worley and I coach linebackers together, but I’m probably more of a set of eyes and a set of ears for (DC Brandon) Easterly. It’s worked out really well.”
Should PG win the championship, Texarkana will stand alone as the only city in Texas to have three different schools win football and baseball championships in their history.
“We’ve had some pretty good teams over the years,” Morris said. “The 01 team was pretty good, we just happened to run into Everman, who went on to win the championship. The 08 team and 09 teams were good; we just happened to run into Celina and teams like that. It’s such a difficult task to get to the state championship in Texas; not that anybody thought we couldn’t but it was not highly probable.”
The Hawks have lost to teams deep