Nothing was the same for Aledo after ’98 championship
All roads to the UIL state football 11-man championships lead to Houston. With the announcement that the 2015 title games will be at NRG Stadium, the first time they have been held in the city since 2008, the Chronicle will look back each week at some of the best games, moments and performances from past championship games here.
There’s a diner in Aledo called the Bearcat Cafe, named of course, for the mascot of not just the high school but all seven schools.
It’s a meeting place for the community, full of regulars. If you’re the head football coach, it’s where you really can get the pulse of the town.
“When I first got here, the superintendent Willard Stuard called me in and said, ‘If you want to keep this job, you have to do what those five guys before you wouldn’t do. You have to go down to the coffee shop every day for about 15 to 20 minutes and listen to people. You don’t have to talk to them. You don’t have to do what they say. But you do need to listen to them,’ ” said Tim Buchanan, Aledo’s current athletic director after spending 21 years as head coach.
In 1993, Buchanan became Aledo’s fifth coach in six years. Going to the Bearcat Cafe was all about a 32-year-old rookie head coach endearing himself to a tight-knit community west of Fort Worth.
Aledo was good in the 1960s and 1970s, but the success it found in 1998 changed everything.
The Bearcats beat Cuero 14-7 in the Class 3A Division I state championship at the Astrodome. That win launched one of the state’s top modern dynasties.
The Bearcats are seeking their sixth state title in seven years.
It wasn’t always like that. When Buchanan arrived, the program had 17 players total. He won two games in 1993 and six each in 1994 and 1995, but no playoff berths.
It all clicked in 1996 as Aledo went 11-2-1 and reached the state quarterfinals.
“If we hadn’t done it that year, they were going to let me go,” said Buchanan, adding many thought he was too young and inexperienced. “Luckily, we’ve been to the playoffs every year since.”
Aledo reached the semifinals in 1997 before meeting Cuero the next year.
Both teams played with heavy hearts. Cuero suffered a massive flood that October, displacing many, including members of the team.
“I knew that part of Texas and I knew how devastating it was when those floods came through there,” Buchanan said. “People lost their homes. Not just flooded, people lost their homes.”
It was a rocky start for Aledo. The communications system went awry. The starting fullback was injured in the semifinals. The Bearcats were flagged for too many men on the field or a delay of game three times early.
Aledo had minus-2 total yards of offense at halftime. But the Bearcats found a way, getting scores from Joel Laminack and Matt Saunders.
Aledo has won fewer than 10 games only twice since 1996. The Bearcats won three straight titles from 2009-11, another in 2013 in Buchanan’s last season and last season under Steve Wood, the team’s longtime defensive coordinator.
“The ’98 team was the team got us over the hump and got our kids thinking that not only could we win but we could win a state championship,” Buchanan said.